She’s Young and With It

Todd Oldham

I never thought that I would be coveting La-Z-Boy furniture… When the new ReadyMade surprised me in my mailbox yesterday, I was equally surprised by the Todd Oldham La-Z-Boy ads. So, of course, I had to look at the website and you know, I had just been thinking that we need a new sofa… You can play around with the fabric colors on the website. I always thought of myself as more of an Ikea kind of gal than La-Z-Boy. Until now.

Speaking of Ikea, I was tempted to make a drive to Ikea this weekend, until I discovered that the Houston store is closed until June 30th while they move into their new Texas-sized store. I’m broke anyway so it’s better that way. The grand opening of the new store is August 4th. I may be MIA around that time.

In true DIY fashion, yesterday I decided that I must paint these awful brown doors and trim in our house. Some dufus in the past painted the doors in the hallway and bedrooms a very glossy dark brown. This coupled with the terrible brown wood paneling and wood trim makes one very depressed. It’s not even good and natural in a cabin sort of way. Oddly, our landlord will allow us to do just about anything to improve the house – EXCEPT do something about the wood paneling. He is an elderly man and I think he finds the wood paneling an attribute rather than an eyesore. In the past, he offered to let us purchase his other house one street over and when we went to look at the house, it had wood paneling in one room also. (We could not afford the house, in case you were wondering. And although it is on a quieter street, we like this house and yard better, despite the massive amounts of wood paneling.) Anyway, enough about the wood paneling and back to the dufus who painted the doors. We made a detour to the hardware store and bought some white paint (winter mood is the shade), in the hopes that white doors will offset some of the brown in the rooms and hallway. But because the doors are a super glossy brown, I have to sand them down first. I should prime them too, but I think I will skip that step. All told I have six doors to sand and paint. Four of the doors are only brown on one side (closets and bathroom) while the other two are full glossy brown on both sides.

While sanding, I got a good look at the 55 years worth of paint underneath. It appears that prior to brown, the doors were pink. Pink? What were they thinking? They must have really liked pink. There was also some awful shelf paper in a very bright floral pink that we promptly removed when we moved in.

Why oh why can’t we do something about the wood paneling? The landlord admitted that he put it up because tenants were putting too many holes in the wall. But now there are lots of holes from the nails in the wood paneling! As much as we want a modernist home, we also want an old home to “fix up”. But we have no money, so we need not worry about that just now.

Stuff

* I have been meaning to tell you about Awful Cufflinks since I found it via not martha earlier in the week. I love the daily posts about the little consumer items in life that I would like to have were I not poverty stricken.

* Speaking of poverty stricken, I have to take my car in for a brake check. The brakes seem to be grinding. EEK! Keep your fingers crossed for me that it’s just brake pads.

* On Monday I made the portabello mushroom bake from The Garden of Vegan. Yum! It was sooo good. Earthy in that mushroom kind of way. I really enjoyed it and I think it would be even better in the fall.

* Clint and I are way intrigued by this little blurb that Clint found in the Chronicle:

The Article is Here

“Another way-cool new business is setting up shop in the 78704 ZIP code. Gerardo Alvarez is the proud owner of Indie-Pop Cool Treats (2310 S. Lamar). The hip new store will offer Mexican aguas frescas, paletas, fruit cups, and a full dipping cabinet of gelatos and sorbettos made fresh locally by Dolce Vita. Gelato maker Concetta Mastroianni tells us she’s concentrating on tropical and Latin flavors for some of the products she’s creating for the new store, so look for flavors such as tamarindo and cajeta. The grand opening is this Saturday, June 26, so go by and check them out.”

I love me some agua fresca and gelato, but what’s up with the name? Will they be spinning the indie pop while we sip our agua frescas? I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.

More David Sedaris!

Get yourself over to copacetic to read janice’s review of seeing David Sedaris in Seattle during his book tour. She has tons of great pictures – and a great story!

David Sedaris is Bigger than a Rock Star!

Clint and I arrived two hours before the scheduled 7 p.m. David Sedaris reading last Thursday. He was reading from his newest book, Dress Your Family in Curduroy and Denim. When we arrived just before 5 p.m., the crowd had already begun to gather upstairs at BookPeople. I would estimate 100 people had already gathered to grab good seats. I just have to wonder what time they arrived to get those seats.

So, we patiently waited… for two hours. At least they had drawings and trivia while waiting. The drawings/trivia were to win a promo of Sedaris reading from his new book. Clint won a copy by answering a Sedaris trivia question. So now we have audio of the first three chapters of the book.

Around 6:30, Sedaris came out to mingle with the crowd and sign books.

He promptly began reading at 7 p.m. He was met with such applause that I thought he would receive a standing ovation. It was so crowded that they had stopped letting people upstairs, where he was reading, and they were broadcasting the reading upstairs and down.

Sedaris began his reading with a story about his sister Tiffany. He also explained why there aren’t many stories about Tiffany like there are about sisters Amy and Lisa, which I had just been wondering about earlier that day. He stated that she used to tell him not to write about her and then a year ago started asking why he never wrote about her. Doesn’t explain the lack of stories about sister Gretchen, but anyway… He followed the story with a reading of short journal entries about such items as apotemnophilia and the House on Poo Corner (about a manure-covered lawn near his house with boyfriend Hugh in England). Then he recommended reading Random Family : Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, stating he would buy and read two copies of it before purchasing his own book.

Then the book signing started and he made a plee to allow all the hardcore (adding “not social”) cigarette smokers to be allowed to have their books signed first. We left, caring not to stand in the line to have a book signed. I cannot imagine how long people had to wait. It was chaos. But good chaos. It makes me happy that people care that much about books to treat Sedaris like a rock star.

So…

I’m going to give my teeth update here and then separately the David Sedaris review because he does not deserve to be lumped in with my teeth. Although the story he read did have a minor reference to teeth, which I found very appropriate.

I had my two teeth pulled last Wednesday. It was not as horrible as I imagined. In fact, it was over in under 30 minutes. The only problem was that I needed several doses of novocaine for my problematic tooth. I was still feeling sensitivity after the first dose. The dentist told me that as soon as that tooth came out and the novocaine wore off, I would instantly feel better. He was right. I can actually swish cold water around in my mouth and not feel the fury of that tooth anymore. On the other hand, the side with the non-problematic tooth is still very sore for some bizarro reason.

The beauty of the dentist is the use of novocaine. I didn’t feel a thing. Other than the pressure of his tools. The teeth were out in a whip and I only knew because he told me when they were out.

The ugly part of seeing an orthodontist is that they never use novocaine or any sort of pain reliever. My ortho had advised that removing my palate expander would be “uncomfortable”. Holy cow. That was an understatement. I thought for sure there would be some way that they loosen the glue holding the thing in before they remove the expander. Nope. To give you a mental picture, the palate expander was bonded with glue to the back four of my upper teeth on both sides. The glue and acrylic went all the way around those teeth – from gum line to gum line. How do they remove it, you might ask? They simply start pulling with some kind of plier-like tool. They pull until the thing cracks into pieces. And then they pull some more. I swear I thought my teeth were being pulled out of my head. And the ortho’s office loves to make jokes like, “Oh, there goes a bicuspid” as part of the appliance flies across the room from the pulling pressure. Ouch. My hands were gripping the arms of the chair. My knuckles were turning white. I was sweating. My eyes were watering. I cannot believe that children sit through that kind of torture. I’m an adult and I was whimpering during parts of that ordeal. And the worst part, this is pretty nasty, the glue tastes and smells awful enough to make you gag.

I now read these adult braces message boards and listservs to get a sense of other adults who are being tortured with orthodontics. One woman had described her palate expander removal with a statement something to the effect of, “It was worse than giving birth.” Now, I don’t know about that of course, but I assure you that it is a pretty traumatic experience.

Happily, I now have a lovely clear retainer on top (similar in appearance to Invisalign). No more awful palate expander with the metal bar straight across my mouth. I can say “s” and “g” sounds with confidence. I take it out to eat and brush. Although the sucker is very hard to get in and out. That makes my eyes water too. It’s nice not to have a huge acrylic mound around my teeth. I have to wear the retainer because the ortho is worried about my bite, but after removing the expander he said that my bite looked better than he expected (whatever that means) and he should be able to put on the upper braces in 6 to 8 weeks.

So. This should be the last of my teeth talk for a while. Rejoice, dear readers.