The washing machine repair man is upstairs right this minute.

Just in time too, as yesterday I had to wear mens socks and my bathing suit cover-up as a shirt.

First, he arrived early (yay!) then parked his car by my mailbox and sat in it smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone for twenty minutes (boo). Second, he asked if this was "Mike's house" (if he later asks if it is "Hanna's washing machine" I am going to kill him). Third, here is a little dialogue we had that does not fill me with confidence:

Hanna: Thank you so much for coming out; I sure hope you can fix the washer!

Washing Machine Man: I wish so too!

Um.

Is that his general first step when fixing things? Making a wish? Shit, if I knew that was all there was to fixing washing machines, I would have wished mine was fixed last week instead of sweating over the manual trying to figure out what "nD" stands for and following all the unhelpful steps suggested by the Samsung company.

I am now going to walk around Mike's house pointing at various appliances and making wishes. Freezer, I WISH YOU HAD ICE CREAM IN YOU! I'll let you know about my results.

I am not "expressing myself"

Our brand new washing machine, which I was already not on good terms with, broke last week. Low blow, washing machine, low blow. Now I hate it something decent, but I don't know how to retaliate. Give it the cold shoulder? Pee in its cornflakes? I'll just write nasty things about it on the internet and call it even.

The deal is: we call the manufacturer, they call some local repair company, and this local joint sends someone out to fix our hateful washer whenever they feel like it. Which may or may not be some time in the next two weeks. I don't have enough clothes to last me until then! I'm already wearing things from my drawer of clothes that do not really fit me or look nice. Today it was an american gothic style blouse (yeah, a blouse) and jeans that look amazing when I put them on and ten seconds later are baggy in the ass and knees. My last pair of normal socks are on my feet right now. In two weeks I'll be deep into the bag of completely out of style and weird clothes I meant to donate to the salvation army in 1998.

So, who wants to hang out in two weeks? I'll be wearing this cat sweater and green hot pants. Let's go somewhere public.

I am full of good ideas. This is perhaps not one of them though.

My mother is getting married this weekend. A lovely Sunday morning brunch wedding. Most of the female guests, I imagine, are going to be wearing floaty dresses in a summery pastel palate. I am going to be wearing a skanky black cocktail dress that makes me look like possibly I am the paid escort of one of the other guests.

I hardly ever wear makeup, but whenever I get a big zit I feel compelled to wear an enormous amount of eyeliner; like, amounts comparable to Alice Cooper. My hope is that people will be so distracted by my insane raccoon eyes that they won't notice my skin issues.

I am putting this same delusional concept into play for the wedding. A few days ago my son leapt onto our bed while I was sleeping, bounced across the mattress, and dove into my prone face in an enthusiastic and painful attempt to give me a hug at 5:45 a.m. I got a big hug, a toddler yelling, "Hello mommy! WAKE UP!" in my ear, and a fat lip.

So my thinking is that if I dress like a hooker on my mother's wedding day, everyone will be staring at my inappropriate clothes, and nobody will notice my swollen, purple face. Good plan, yes/yes? Just please don't let me get a zit too, because lord knows what kind of next-level distraction tactics I will have to employ in that case.

Turns out, it wasn't allergies

(this is pretty much a cut and paste from an e-mail, but I thought others might be interested...)

So, score one in the DOG column in the eternal debate: should I have a kid or get a dog? I think it is unlikely that a dog would secretly shove a peanut up his own nose in MAY necessitating multiple doctor visits in JULY to find out what the hell is going on. Yes, Nort has had a peanut living in his nose for over a month.

A PEANUT in his NOSE for a MONTH.

What kind of parent am I??? The ear nose throat doctor was super nice (and very cute in that older doctor way) but he had a rack full of what appeared to be his collection of shiny, pointy, medieval torture devices. Turns out it was his array of things-stuck-in-your-nose removal tools. I recommend you never put anything up your nose for fun, because getting it out later (say, a month later) is pretty traumatizing. Did you ever see Total Recall? Pretty much like that. Like a disgusting magic trick, he crammed an Edward Scissorhands like contraption up my son's nose and, with a flourish, came out with a peanut. He said he had already taken a googly eye out of some kid's ear earlier in the day.


Also, he gave me the peanut back! What on earth am I supposed to do with it??? Save it until he is a teenager and show it to girls he wants to date? My sister said I should bronze it and wear it around like a Tiffany bean.

Go play outside, son

One of the major reasons we decided to buy a house was because we wanted to give our son some room to run. We were living in a townhouse and the only patch of grass was about as big as a car, and the neighbor's dog always crapped in it. They only picked it up if we all happened to be outside while the dog was actually going. Otherwise, they would dash back in their house and hide, perhaps hoping that the dog poop fairy would come and clean it up for them. Eventually my husband started picking it up and re-homing it on their porch. Another neighbor bought a box of coctail umbrellas and festively placed one in each lawn crap.

Of all the homes we looked at, this one has the most land. Awesome, you say. Not so, I correct you.

The entire septic system had to be replaced. It was SUPPOSED to be done before we moved in. Naturally, they started right AFTER we moved in, around Christmas. Nothing says "welcome to your new home" more than the melodious sounds of a backhoe grinding up your front yard every day for weeks. I wanted to jump out of a window. In another lucky break for people who hate us, the ground froze, so they had to halt production until APRIL. Leaving us with a front yard that is the exact opposite of the grassy playland we had envisioned for our son:

Also, it reeks of sewer gas.

What, you are wondering about the back yard? That is where they dumped the dirt from the front yard. Great for little children. Mud as far as the eye can see, and hundreds of jagged rocks just holding their breath and waiting for a tender child to trip and land on them:

I still let him play back there.

What's happening, hot stuff?

Make a comment! For real, I don't care what it is, you can tell me about the weather in your town today, or how your paperboy always throws your New York Times into a puddle. I changed the comments filter so anyone can post, you don't need an account. At least, I think I did this. I am like an octogenarian when it comes to computer savvy.

What's up, one eye?

What's that you say? This is the laziest picture I have ever posted here? The perspective is horribly off, the doorknob is on the wrong side, the colors are lame, and the grass looks like a fungus? I respond: suck it, blog critics!

It's hard to give a good description of a house, because most houses are basically the same. There is a roof, door, some windows, and maybe a plant or two by the stoop. There are castles and shacks, but most of us in the suburbs live in some variation of the colonial theme.

HOWEVER, there is one house in this neighborhood that stands out. I hope it goes up for sale just so I can be creepy and poke through the mls pictures of the inside. The realtor would definitely have to use a flash, owing to the particular defining feature of this house: It has ONE window. For real! ONLY ONE. And this is not some huge, modern wall of glass window either, it is about the size of a porthole. Imagine how freaky that looks. Where on other houses are more windows, there is just plain old wall. It makes me feel like this house was in a horrible accident and all its windows were sewn up. It's like a cyclops. (Okay, there is one on the side also, so that makes two total. But one window per side? According to my research, which involves staring at people's homes as I drive down the street, that is grossly below average.)

Go ahead and count how many windows are in your house. If you don't have time to count, just estimate. What? It's more than one? You win!

I have been working up some theories about the occupants. They could be:

1. Running a meth lab.

2. Vampires.

That's pretty much all I've got so far.