Apologia

Shoot if you must this small black head but spare my Rotozip, he said*.

Apparently I can scoff at Steve's inability to, say, empathize fully with the myriad ramifications of recurrent pregnancy loss. I can banter about his terrorist sperm and merrily theorize about what they might mean, evolutionarily speaking. I can even publicly declare his beloved duvet cover to be the ugliest fucking thing ever and I can assert that the fact that he spent the mid-80s listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd just goes to prove that I am smarter than he is

BUT

when I imply that his remodeling skills are less than ept or that his project schematics are flawed... well, I have gone too far.      

Steve, icily, wishes me to set the record straight and to explain that I occasionally take liberties with The Truth in my relentless pursuit of The Funny. So, lest he go all Lysistrata*** on me just as I am emerging from post D&C funk, here it is.

The Truth is: Steve does excellent home improvements. He is creative, meticulous, knows via osmosis everything there is to know about wiring plumbing duct work carpentry and load-bearing whatsits, and he works like a man possessed. If Steve starts a project he will finish the project. The delay this time was not Steve's fault, it was Scott's fault. And there was little Steve could have done to avoid the troubles caused by Scott the Flake as 1) Scott came highly recommended (with reservations: good skills, poor reliability) by a cabinetmaker we admire and he DID do excellent work when he was actually here; and 2) Steve thought he had stymied the reliability issue by negotiating to pay Scott only half of the fee until the project was completed to his satisfaction. HALF! 50%! Steve just underestimated a man's willingness to not get paid in exchange for not doing the work but, hey, he is only mutant after all (zing! ha! get it? Steve. Genetics. Mutant. I SLAY me.)   

So my sincere apologies to my adored husband whose tireless dedication makes these completely unnecessary home projects possible.

(Seriously, I have just taken this picture of my kitchen. Isn't this a perfectly nice kitchen, as is? Certainly the nicest I have ever had. Do you know how many of my childhood kitchens could fit into this one with no exaggeration whatsoever? Six . And yet Steve is going to add a little wing to it. Just because the refrigerator and dishwasher doors touch... oh and he has developed an unholy passion for this refrigerator. He is a little insane, I think. Possibly hereditary.)

Well damn it. I sat down to write about something completely different but got distracted by Steve asking if I was posting and demanding a public apology.

And what a great apology it was, too: "I am sorry I told the internet you are a shoddy general contractor and I will rectify this by explaining that you are merely suffering from mental disease." Although I admit this is better than my usual apologies which tend to run along the lines of, "I am sorry you are such an insufferable dick."

Now I will have to post again later because I actually had something to say. Damn it. 

*"Up from the meadows rich with corn..." etc. Ode to Barbara Fritchie, I think. Who, we are informed, scratched when she was itchy**.

**And THAT was Ogden Nash. Are you sure you want citations? They kinda bog things down.

***Lysistrata. Women, displeased, withhold sex. You see where I am going with this.

Comments

[snickollet]

You have a gorgeous kitchen and gorgeous house in general. But one thing I have noticed since becoming a home (well, condo) owner myself last year is that no matter how nice it is, I can always find something to change or improve. Unfortunately, neither me nor my husband have any of our own skills in this realm, so we live with a lot of things the way they are.

Bottom line here: your house is amazing and Steve is a gem.

[JenniF]

Of course we understood that you were just kidding and knew that it was ALL Scott's fault! Perhaps you should show Steve that lovely post you did about him awhile back, the one were you came up with 100 things you like/love about him. I love your kitchen btw! I agree with the other posters about the frig though.

Jenni

[sheilah]

Whoa...the wood...the marble...the stainless...I think I just drooled down my shirt.

So, does this mean that Steve actually READS your blog? God I sure hope that my husband never reads mine...

[Heels]

I love that kitchen with the giddy, silly, overblown hormonal excitement of a teenaged girl on her first boyfriend.

Very.

Nice.

Kitchen.

[Natalee]

Love. Your. Kitchen.

As if my envy of your gorgous hubby, child, and house wasn't enough, you had to taunt me with photos of your fabulous kitchen....

[Amy]

Blech on the see-through fridge doors -- my dad and inappropriately young wife remodeled their kitchen last year and put in a fridge with see-through door (not SubZ; I think its a Traulsen) and BLECH. It looks really weird -- you'll be standing in their beautiful kitchen, but find yourself distracted by looking at milk cartons, cheese wrappers, marinating meats, etc. I hate it.

Also, Subzeros? My mom has had 3 and they all sucked. Many costly repairs. She put the fridge drawer things in her current kitchen and hates them -- too hard to keep clean, not big enough, etc, etc. Says she'd never get them again.

P.S. Your kitchen is lovely.

[Helen]

I've had a few stumbling blog apologies to my boy as well. Yours was MAGNIFICENT.

[shannon]

We have the same countertops! I think. Black Zodiaq?
Otherwise, six of my kitchen could fit in yours. But I kinda like everything within pivot-reach. Don't you get tired walking around the island all the time?
Pretty wood too, btw.

[Sheila]

Thank you for the citations. Now, instead of fixating on the photo of your lovely (albeit smugly clean and sparkling) kitchen, I can go look up some literary stuff. Another thing about you has been made clear to me now as well. You see, I was wondering just how it was that Steve even KNEW about the dishwasher and fridge doors touching in the first place. In my house, if that unfortunate arrangement happened in the kitchen, it might take years for anyone but me to notice. But then I hit on it-- YOU were complaining about the Lysistratification of STEVE! Not the other way around, as may be the case --uh, hypothetically-- in my marriage. And then I remembered that whenever my husband gets lucky, he becomes unusually helpful around the house for a few days afterwards. Ergo, if Steve is like my husband, and you are the kind of wife I think you are (nudge, nudge, wink, wink*), Steve is probably unloading the dishwasher on a daily basis! A-Ha! I better get busy if I want my countertops to shine like yours. Excuse me for a while.

* Sadly, Monty Python references are the only ones I can cite back to you. I'll try to be more helpful from now on-- you know, since I won't be cleaning my kitchen any more.

[Laurie]

Dude, is that coffee cup on the table dirty? good.

[Lisa P]

I love your kitchen. It reminds me somewhat of mine and even makes me want to consider darker cabinetry when the time comes. (Mine were natural maple.)

I have to say I thought the same thing as others about the island. Surely that would be easier to rebuild???

As far as the refrigerator goes, I KNEW it was a SubZero before I even clicked the link. My husband is a SubZero freak as well. Quite frankly, I like them, too. That model is gorgeous but wouldn't lend itself as nicely to having wood panels on the front which I love. I hate the whole refrigerator looking like a refrigerator thing.

Can't wait to hear what you really sat down to write about!

[julia]

The kitchen is gorgeous. The fridge, um, it has a big freakin' window in it. Which means you'd have to keep everything all prettified and neat. But, going by your kitchen, you're a much neater person than me, so maybe that's not a problem. Still, it is a Sub Zero. I can understand the drool.

[Leslie]

A quick zip through the previous comments shows me that most of my thoughts are already conveyed - move the dishwasher, duh; get a drawer-style dishwasher, even better; DON'T under any circumstances get a see through fridge (although if you keep the fridge as compulsively clean as the rest of the house I s'pose you could...). As for the neat-and-tidiness of every photo you ever show us my bet is all the normal house crap was briefly tossed over your shoulder for the Kodak moment and retured to the countertop/corner from whence it came immediately thereafter. So there! Hah. (Please tell me that's true...)

As the wife of a contractor with a house in various states of repair and "improvement" I see your "new wing" and raise you one 1960's yellow bathroom with draperies covering the soul-sucking fluorescent lights (what can I say, I'm inventive).

[lisa]

the wood!

the light!

the cleanliness!

I think I shall pass out from the sheer beauty of that kitchen.

[Jena]

I'm a caterer, and if you ever saw how tiny my kitchen is, you'd cry. I do, every time I walk inside it. That being said I lust after your kitchen, the island, the space and light, the fact that you HAVE a dishwasher!!!! I also want that fridge, unholy though it may be, it is beautiful!!!

[pk]

woweeeee that fridge is superwondrous, but posher than my entire house. no wonder steve is building it a whole wing.

also, fellow commenters, i don't think julia has anything to fear from see-through door into the fridge. awesome housekeeping skills.

[SheilaC]

Your post is very funny. But the hyperbole on that site for the SubZero-Pro-whatever fridge is hilarious! Surely it must be a satire on ordinary over-the-top ads for appliances? They've got to be kidding. And the glass door idea is truly terrible, as you so delightfully explain.
Your kitchen is gorgeous, too nice too actually cook or eat in. Lucky you!
Best wishes,

[terri c]

In the interest of total honesty, I am compelled to say that I do not envy the kitchen. If I had a kitchen like that, I would have to cook...

[Jessica]

Holy Sh**** I'd kill for a kitchen like that!
Although I do have to thank you for posting the picture. Until you did I REALLY couldn't figure out a configuration where the fridge and washing machine could't be open at the same time.

[Heather]

I think that is an ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS Kitchen!! I want it in my house. Ta hell with the fact that the dishwasher and the fridge don't open at the same time. Up until 4 months ago we didn't even have a dishwasher!! :-)

[Gillian]

Passing my computer on the way out to the grocery store, I thought I'd just google "morning sickness hereditary", to see if what a friend told me was truly evidence that "you are probably not pregnant" because neither she nor her mother suffered while my own mother does not admit to one day of morning sickness through two pregnancies and I have been troughs-and-waves nauseated every day of the last two weeks. After reading several "no evidence of heredity" statements (and thinking HA!) I decided to follow one link that that said "Well, dammit," in the middle of the blurb. And here I am at julia.typepad.com, and then on to julie-a little pregnant and Mrs. Pygmalion and jencaitnatalie-additionproblems... Wow. Vast quantities of gingerale have been drunk and the grocery store may have been demolished to make way for a sperm bank and I am still here laughing. I think that if this 38-year-old never-been-pregnant plan goes as warned, I may be spending a lot of time here, or even if it doesn't. Thanks!

[Karen]

There is nothing unholy about Steve's passion for that refrigerator! My god, but I'm in love. Completely in love. I just told my husband that I'm very sorry, and it's been nice and all, but the SubZ and I are running off to Vegas. Holy Crap! What I wouldn't do for that beautiful, beautiful masterpiece.

And, oh yeah, completely, totally, and utterly in love with your kitchen in general, too. Imagine how freaking amazing it would be with that beautiful, beautiful masterpiece SubZero! I would never ever cheat on that beautiful SubZ, oh no!

Steve, I must say, has excellent taste in at least two things: women and refrigerators.

[kk3x0z]

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