Somehow I managed to marry the hardest person in the world to buy gifts for. It’s true. I would never lie about something like that because, well, that would be an idiotic thing to lie about. I’d rather lie about being smart or being the 2007 Regional 4-Square Champion.

I’ve already started my Christmas Brainstorming for 2007 because, as I’ve learned to do since getting married, even if I start by Halloween I’ll still be trying to fill that meager quota of gifts by the 25th of December. Maybe I should push it up to Easter instead.

“Two years in to marriage and each Christmas season has become more of a frenzied sprint to reinvent oxygen rather than embracing that yuletide joy.”

The problem with The Wife™ is that she’s too easy-going. She’s not a material girl or a pamper-me chick, so the typical suggestions of spa treatments or salon days are out. She’d punch me in the nose if I got her something like that because they make her uncomfortable. We get along really well like that.

She doesn’t cook, so cookbooks, cooking classes or fancy appliances would be unappreciated. She doesn’t really drink anything besides cancer juice Diet Coke, so vintage wine, a tea set or an espresso machine are no-gos. Candles, fancy soaps, yoga equipment, perfume, electronics…nothing. Wouldn’t be interested in any of it. Hell, even if expensive jewelry fell within our tiny monetary allotment for each other, she’d still politely scoff. She’s not too sweet on jewelry either. She has no real hobbies, which makes me think that if I ever snuck out of the house, I’d come back one day to find her still sitting on the couch watching Comedy Central, unaware that I was even missing.

Two years in to marriage and each Christmas season has become more of a frenzied sprint to reinvent oxygen rather than embracing that yuletide joy. Coming up with potential gift ideas makes me feel like MacGuyver attempting to rewire an exploding bomb using WD-40 and an afro pick. I’ve already exhausted the few avenues of possibility between the first two Christmases, each time feeling like a friggin’ champ for coming up with a handful of creative, thoughtful gifts. Gifts like wool camping socks (because she has terrible circulation and frankly I was tired of almost having a heart attack each night when she would kick me with her icy talons).

Yea, that’s how far we’ve come in two years. Wool socks. But they were SmartWool dammit.

So as I continue to spend lunch breaks at work laboring over the flowchart of ideas (you think I’m joking), I’ve come up with perhaps one item that doesn’t duplicate anything given previously. And it sucks.

By this time next year I’ll be even more screwed. Perhaps I should just make up some hobbies for her. Like Laundry or Bathroom Cleaning. Or listening. Listening would be a great hobby. That would give me unlimited things to work with.

With all of the epic buffoonery that went on two Mondays ago, you would assume that I had squared up or at least paid down most of my karmic debt. In reality, though, it seems as if my solo comedy routine has done little but to whet the appetite of whatever gods are up there chuckling at my misfortune.

When I found out that The Wife™ was going out with friends after work this past Monday, I did what any married man who was left alone for the evening would do: I made ice cream. In a halfhearted attempt to use up some milk and other perishables before leaving town this week, I decided upon a simple peanut butter recipe and set to preparing the mixture. That’s all it took for things to quickly slip into the realm of the absurd. Again.

Loading up all the ingredients into the food processor (because I didn’t feel like cleaning the blender), it quickly came to my attention that the Cuisinart bowl was cracked. I know this because milk started pouring all over the countertop and floor. I am perceptive if nothing else. So in a rather calm state, I removed the plastic bowl and transfered it to the other countertop to put it begrudgingly into the blender. And of course picking it up made even more milk and cream spill out, and which point Jonas’ salivary glands Spidey Sense was activated and he got all pushy and tried to get up in my business looking for some handouts.

So, just to recap, we’ve got milk flowing everywhere, into cabinets, onto the clean floor, etc. We’ve got the dog body checking me like an NHL Allstar to get some of that free food action. And we’ve got me pissed off because yet another kitchen appliance is borked and because I didn’t even really want to be bothered making this stupid ice cream anyway. And then all I did was try to pick up the food processor base.

Cue the second explosion in two weeks.

Apparently, as the Cuisinart base slipped out of my hands (remember? Gratuitous amounts of milk?) it oh-so-conveniently landed on the cutting board next to the sink. The one made of glass. The one that looks like this ONLY LARGER. “Break resistant” my white, Irish ass.

So as you can imagine, dropping a 10 pound item onto a glass pane sent milk-covered glass flying, oh, EVERYWHERE, including all the way to the adjacent dining room a solid 20 feet away. This scared Porky the Truffling Dog so much that he almost crapped on the tile. And I spent the next hour or more on my hands and knees picking up microscopic pieces of glass from every nook and cranny of the first floor.

So if you visit my house, which I hope you all may do some day, I offer one simple caveat. Don’t come on a Monday. And don’t eat the Peanut Butter Ice Cream. Either could land you in the hospital.

When we first took possession of the home we live in now, I was amazed at the stupidity of the previous owner simply for the fact that when he finished the basement, he brazenly drywalled over the main water shut-off valve. And while I know squat about homeownership, I knew enough to question our home inspector when I (nor he) could locate it. They all looked at me like I was a nutjob for caring, but now I couldn’t be more thankful for finally installing that access panel.

This past weekend I decided to tackle painting the master bathroom. Truthfully I had been working on it for over a month, painstakingly stripping wallpaper, climbing on 15-foot ladders to the apex of the ceiling and dangling precariously to prep the walls for the one thing I hate above all others, painting. Last night, as I admired the beautiful paint job on the room that holds the tub and toilet, I decided that I should restore the disassembled commode to working order before heading to bed. Having done this trivial task a few times, I didn’t think much of it.

I was done in a matter of minutes and refilled the tank, but soon began to notice tiny drips from the bolts holding the reservoir to the bowl. This is the point at which my curiosity causes problems. As I ratcheted each of the three bolts one click tighter (to dutifully ensure a good seal), I heard it, the sound you don’t want to hear when working on a toilet full of water. The tiniest of tiny cracks.

OH SHIT.

I quickly reversed the direction of the ratchet and untightened each bolt. But as you’d expect the direction of this story to take, it was indeed too late.

As the toilet tank exploded, I watched it in slow motion from a sitting position adjacent to it and boy front row seating never looked so soggy. I did what anyone would do at this point, which was try to catch the GIAHUGIC piece of flying toilet before it hit my face, which in turn posed a new problem, since Exploded Toilets are made of very, very sharp ceramic. Cue awesome hand lacerations and blood going everywhere.

Now that the several gallons of water had landed in my lap and offering a refreshing bath, I turned my attention to the tiny spray angry geyser violently puking water all over the nicely painted bathroom. Quick-thinking handyman that I am, I immediately jumped for the local shut-off valve on the wall, at which point I was less than relieved to find out was also not working as one would wish. It decided to snap off into my hand, because God hates me, and now there’s standing water in the bathroom.

Trying to keep my shit together, I grabbed a pair of vice grips to manually turn the valve, but they were curiously wrapped in duct tape and provided little help. Then it hit me, as The Wife™ was screaming at me: go for the water shut off valve in the basement as fast as your tiny Irish legs will carry you!

I took off at full speed only to realize that my choice of attire would most certainly be a nuisance in my dash for success. Apparently XXXL sweatpants are surprisingly absorbent and in this case they seemed to have retained almost all the water, making me a giant, flailing Bounty Paper Towel. And when trying to run at full speed, this provided much the same aerodynamic drag as, say, a cow sprinting with a parachute on it’s back. So, the pants came off.

Dashing through the house in my boxers, blood and water flying everywhere, I finally found the shut-off valve. After cleaning up as much water as we could, I tried again to manually turn the local valve off (so to be able to restore water to the rest of the house), only to have it too snap off in my hand. It’s amazing how mocking a tiny piece of plastic can be. So at 9:42pm I realized I had 18 minutes to get to the hardware store before it closes. This is the hardware store that is 15 minutes away, the hardware store that surely will not let me inside wearing a pair of drenched XXXL paper towels and sporting an open flesh wound.

Driving one-handed at 95mph in the rain, I made it to the store with 3 minutes to spare plenty of time to pick up the part that I need and head home, sufficiently exhausted and equally pissed off.

So now that it’s all said and done can say that I’ve learned a few things here: 1) I now need to replace a portion of the kitchen ceiling, 2) I need to repaint the bathroom, 3) I need to buy a new toilet, and, 4) you can’t make stories like this up. And as I drove back from the hardware store, the first bit of consolation to hit me was, “Well, at least I’ll have something to write about tomorrow.”

Indeed.

First Event

Walking to my car yesterday, I noticed some oddly parked cars, cars that decided to just stop in the middle of the road. Congregating around them are people that look far too trendy for Kentucky, people with Polartec clothing that is rather unnecessary at 60°F. The people have clipboards, making them Official Looking People. All of them are pointing their Polartec’d fingers to an empty field that, in my two and a half years of working here, I have never seen anyone other than the grounds crew step foot on. But darn it if they weren’t sketching and talking about moving things. And pointing. Lots of pointing.

Second Event

6:50am this morning, entering the campus I sail past one of those road construction LED signs on the way to my parking lot. My mind is cloudy by sleep, a long commute, and a distinct lack of caffeine. By the time I park my car (and notice the obvious lack of other cars), the message registers with me: “Parking lot closed 11/7-11/14” What the hell? That dude in the sketchy white van right there, the one who looks as if he’s being paid to stop cars like mine and/or sleep against the steering wheel? Yea, he didn’t flag me down. So I’ll just park here. He doesn’t have a clipboard. Or Polartec gear.

Later, upon hearing the news that a certain home improvement show starring a certain carpenter-turned-host with a rabid fan following will be filming at our campus, things start to click. I mention this to a coworker who interrupts me mid-story saying, “Really? Because the police called me saying John Faust needs to move his car.” I wave her off, thinking she’s trying to be funny again. Because she’s a stand-up comedian. Seriously. But no, she persists until I finally realize that indeed the police are tracking me down.

Then it all makes sense to my dull, under-caffeinated brain.

The events are all connected. The people I saw sporting clipboards and pointy fingers were show producers. The dude in the van likely was being paid to watch the lot in his unmarked white van (though his sleeping skills were much more refined). And indeed Extreme Home Makeover will be profiling Patrick Henry Hughes, the semi-famous blind student who is a member of the school’s band. As part of his “reveal,” they’ll be doing a makeover of the band’s practice field, which I know as “the field formerly just a patch of weeds grass.”

You’d think for all the crime shows that I zone-out to, I’d be more up on connecting the dots. Instead I had to do the walk of shame past all the police officers to retrieve my car which was all alone in the lot, now roped-off with yellow caution tape.

Patrick, I hope you’re thrilled. As for me, my lazyass now gets to spend the next week parking across town at the stadium and hoofing 1.03 miles to my office, pre-dawn. And I don’t own anything Polartec.