Suzanna Danna

Word to your chicken.

So, hi. Um, so what’s been going on, y’aaaaaaaaaaallll?

Look, I’m sorry. It has been ages and ages since I held you in my supple arms and stroked your furrowed brow. I haven’t told you a story in many moons. Yeah, I put up that one little paragraph of bullshit when I was angry, but have I met your wishes baby? No, no I have not.

I know, I know... you have needs too. Do you not bleed when someone hits you with a car? Do you not yearn... for oxygen... when you are being smothered? Do you not cry out... with pain... when bitten by a small fur-bearing mammal? Yes, yes you do.

So, I am sorry. My apology is here... in black and white (and sometimes gray). I know I treat you like Meredith treats McDreamy and then looks poutily confused when he moves on with his life. Have you moved on baby? Are you tired of me disappearing for months on end?

Or will you take me back? Will you stay with me? Will you endure the ... um, bad prose until I mildly amuse you?

Well, good. Glad to have you back on board Doc, Isaac, Beaver Gopher.... um, Charo. Let’s get up to speed and then we can relax a little.

Since we last heard from our heroine, she was one angry girl. It was like putting a badger in a blender and hitting frappe. I know I get a little angsty this time of year because of my travel schedule and not being able to enjoy the holidays with my family and for fuck’s sake, not having time to even put up a Christmas tree. I did the tree thing last year, and it was pretty. But I haven’t put one up yet and it is... oh, six days from Christmas Eve. I don’t think it’s going to happen, do you?

No? Okay, perfect. Let’s move on.

I don’t want to get dooced, so we won’t talk about work... because dear Lord, in heaven.... I would SO get fired if I opened up my mouth right now.

I haven’t told you guys about the plumbing.... and almost burning down the house... have I? Okay, I can tell by that look on your face that I haven’t. So. Onward!

Back at the beginning of November, one evening I was doing laundry and dishes and later when I went to wash my face to go to bed I noticed that the water wasn’t as hot as I normally like it. The next morning, a Sunday, I took a luke warm - almost cool shower and then casually mentioned it to Mister ... later... that evening when there wasn’t a thing he could do about it except crawl up into the attic and try to relight the pilot light.

No go.

Hmmm.

There was a pretty substantial amount of water in the catch pan under the water heater so we hooked up the shop vac and sucked the water out. The pilot light wasn’t staying lit because water kept dripping on the little gas pipe thingy. Awesome.

The next morning as I filled up the tub with our electric tea kettle and listened to Mister grumble about shaving with cold water I thought, “I can handle this. When I get to the office, I will call around and find a plumber that sounds trustworthy. I will make sure that they have a no ass-crack policy, and that they can come out on an emergency basis.” So when I got to work, I did just that. I found a plumber (nobody would agree to my no ass-crack policy) and they said that they would come out between 12 and 2 pm. I took off the second part of the day and the plumbers showed up at 12:30 and I rejoiced.

Until... dum dum DUUUMMMM! They told me that the water heater had busted the inside liner thingy and would have to be replaced. ALSO.... that the toilets in the guest bathroom and in the master bathroom needed to be resealed and blah blah blah.....

Long story short, they replaced the water heater, YAY!.... and when they lifted the toilet in the guest bathroom... sweet juniper Judas with a pink tutu... I felt like I was on the set of Mike Rowe’s (mrrroow) Dirty Jobs. That was the most disgusting thing I have ever been in close proximity to. And I went to COLLEGE*. It was like a big pipe leading directly into Satan’s hoary ass.

*wtf?

The plumber dudes were all, “The flange is broken.” I was all, “MY EYES!!!! MY EYES! MAKE IT GO AWAY!” The lining to my sinus cavity fled the building and I threw buckets of money at the plumbers to make the bad thing stop telling me it was going to eat my soul. Also, I got Mister a tall toilet. When I sit to tinkle I can’t put my feet flat on the floor, it’s all tippy toes baby. And when the plumbers brought it in, I was all, “Holy shit. Excuse the pun boys. Is that thing by any chance called the TurboFlush 2000?” Joe (plumber guy – sans ass crack) said, “Actually ma’am, it’s the TurboFlush 4000.”

Y’all? Joe wasn’t kidding. It has some air assist low flush scary thing in it that would suck down a house cat. So, Merry Christmas Mister! I present to you... the TurboFlush 4000. And I am not even kidding.

Okay, a few days after that Mister went to .... Austin, or somewhere for a day trip and I was going to call Stacey and beg and plead for a Happy Hour, because I needed a drink or twelve. But for some reason I didn’t. I may have called, and I may have mentioned it, and she may have been unavailable... or something, either way, I went home. But it was late and I walked in the door at 7:05 in the pm. And I know that time exactly because when I opened the door a cloud of acrid white smoke came boiling out of the house.

The cat gave me the finger and ran past me to the safety of the street and I went inside to 1) turn off the house alarm, 2) find out why there was smoke and 3) why the fuck the smoke detectors were not going off!

1) I turned off the house alarm. 2) I looked over at our stove rangy thing and noticed that one of the eyes of the flat panel surface was all angry and red, Hot and shit. And sitting on top of this angry red eye was.... a plastic toaster. Or, what was left of it.

I ran over, turned off the stove, lifted the rest of the toaster from the gooey remains on the stove and then found the first flat edge that I could lay my hands on, wet a towel and started scraping the white molten goo off of the stove. I was scraping and scraping when I realized that the implement I was scraping with was.... fucking plastic! So I chunked that and the wetted towel I had in my frantic paws into the trash. I opened all of the windows, the doors and turned on the fans in every room.

I grabbed the phone and my blackberry (redundant, shut up, I know) and went out to watch the cat fall out of a tree (from 3 feet up... shut it... he’s fat, no making fun of the portly) and call poison control. When I called and told the nice Poison Control lady what I had done she (laughed... not really) calmly went about telling me what plastic could burn down into... the lovely gasses and by products.

Oh, and 3) never found out why the smoke detectors didn’t go off. I guess they made an executive decision of, “Eh, whatever.”

So the Poison Control Lady was all, “Well, let’s see. Hmmm, yes, okay, here it is... Oh, dear. Carbon Monoxide. You’ll need to leave the windows open for the next 48 hours or so and keep clean air circulating. Sulfur Oxide. Blah blah blah... Cyanide.” I interrupted her. “Cyanide. CYANIDE?” She continued, “Yes, but only trace amounts. If there would have been more, you would have already been dead.” So very comforting.

So I sat out on the porch, watched the cat prowl the neighborhood and called Mister, calmly trying to tell him (with his freaking boss in the car!) that I had almost burned down the house. I left out the smoke alarms and the part about cyanide. I figured I would wait until he got home to let him in on those little nuggets of awesomeness.

As far as we can tell. The cat was the dirty culprit. We have left that toaster sitting on the stove for weekends at a time. Especially when we’re all, “Eh.” about dinner and decide on toast. So we figure that the toaster was on the stove, the cat (bastard) was up on the counter (a shooting offense in my house) and he put his little warm paw pad on the stove and it conveniently turned on. So now we have the stove on “CONTROL ALL LOCK” whenever it is not in use.

That’s what I’ve been up to... and how about you?

Oh, and sorry about this, but I had to turn on the comment aide thingy. I was getting spammed by dirty Russian brides and horny old men selling Viagra.

Missed all of you. MWAH!