- [Crash!]
- “Dad?”
- “Dad!”
- “Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!”
- “Where the hell is dad?”
- “If he was up your butt you’d know”
- “Shut up!”
- “You shut–”
- [Crash!]
- (Tandem) “Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!”
- “There he is. He’s at his desk with his headphones on pretending he can’t hear us–DAD!”
- “WHAT!”
- “The dog pooped on Uncle Marty’s bed again.”
13 Things I Would Never Hear Again if I Power Drilled Through My Eardrums
Out of the Mouthes of Babes . . .
I know what I need to do.
I need to kill something.
That’s going to help my self-esteem.
Roon, age 12, playing Call of Duty . . .
DIY: Installing a Vanity in 10 Easy Steps!
Death By Children is about more than the nefarious and deadly machinations of our spawn or their efforts to render us twitching and pale from their ongoing appropriation of internet porn slang. It’s about a lifestyle, a way of going about your day with a kind of Zen focus, a way of being ever more self sufficient and capable. To that end, we present our ongoing series of Do It Yourself projects.
DIY #003: The Vanity.
Materials:
- A vanity.
- A sink.
- Channel locks
- Plumber’s tape
- Plumber’s crack
- Crescent wrench
- Screwdriver
- Hack saw
- Band-aids
- one sink kit (for installing the drain stuff)
- two 12″ water supply lines
- The internet
Installation
- Using the internet, start looking for a vanity. Use Google “shopping,” eBay, and Half.com, late into the morning, discovering wild and gorgeous bathroom vanities worthy of a WalMart heir, vanities that look like they were carefully removed from the apothecary bathroom of a 14th century Amish alchemist. At about 3:41 am, wake up your wife and try to convince her to let you buy a $2,967.13 vanity that comes with a Belarian Granite sink, a black Tennessee marble sink insert, a burnished, teak cabinet made from the remains of President Lincoln’s personal privy, and brass handles melted down from the recovered portholes of the Titanic. Try not to be discouraged as, even in her groggy and sleep deprived pre-dawn fog, your wife points out that the Lincoln vanity is a 32 inch top and we have a 26 inch space. Also, shipping is $541.32.
- Find a vanity at Menard’s online. This is awesome because it looks EXACTLY like the Lincoln vanity, only its made entirely from recycled elementary textbooks, sawdust, and glue. Order. Pay. Feel the warm flush of accomplishment rush through your body.
- Remove the old vanity. This is easily accomplished by simply leaning on it to see where it is attached then letting it crumble beneath your application of modest pressure. Pull the pieces apart, and dispose.
- Go to check on the width of your vanity online. Check. Notice a funny email from your bud that directs you to a website displaying pictures of people who shop at WalMart. Stop surfing this website only after your children come home from school and beg you to make them food. Menards is closed. So you’ll have to get the vanity tomorrow.
- Pick-up new vanity at Menard’s where the plumbing department manager informs you that because you did not check a delivery option when you closed out your shopping cart online, they have not shipped your vanity. He fixes this. It should be here in about 10 days.
- Act like it’s all part of the plan. Scratch your chin. Say, yeah, yeah. That’s what I was hoping. Buy a new toilet to make it look like you’re there for a purpose because that little plumbing department manager weasel is eyeballing you like you’re 113 years old and never heard of a shopping cart. Screw it, buy two new toilets. [see, DIY: Installing a New Super Flush Toilet in 5 Easy Steps].
- Three days later, act non-plussed when Weasel calls to let you know your new vanity was shipped early. Go to Menard’s to pick-up vanity. When asked if youneed any help out to your car, reply with a manly ‘what-are-you-kidding-me?’ shrug. Schlep the box out to the car. Recall that you drive a 2003 Camry and note the box for the vanity is 9 feet by 6 feet by 4 feet. Cram it in.
- Unpack the vanity in the living room while sitting on the couch watching your DVR episode of MadMen. Don Draper would’ve built this thing from scratch.
- Drag vanity to bathroom and slid it into place. My god, that is one beautiful vanity. Look at it. Run your fingers along the details on the bent-wood door. Look how it fits perfectly, how the door opens and closes without hitting. You sir, are a man.
- Lie down on your back and shove your upper body into the cavity of the vanity. Install the p-trap, the drain pipe, and the drain valve. Get everything ready to connect to the existing drain. Note that the new vanity is four inches taller than the old one, that the sink is displaced to nine inches out instead of six and that your shiny new p-trap is about three miles away from your grubby old drain.
- Buy a 9 inch drain extension.
- Measure the gap between the existing drain pipe and the new on hanging below the sink. It’s 6 inches.
- Get the hack saw. Saw 3 inches off of the 9 inch straight pipe.
- Drag the vanity out of the bathroom.
- GET THE BAND AIDS! GET THE BAND AIDS! GET THE BAND AIDS!
- Attach new 6 inch drain pipe into the sink drain. Note: a professional plumber allows for the inside of the fitting. Note the new 1 inch gap between the jagged end of the shortened pipe and the old p-trap SHOULD INCLUDE the one inch of pipe that would fit into the fitting.
- Drag the vanity back into the bathroom.
- Go to Menards and stand in front of the sink repair section. Think to yourself: maybe you’ve been approaching this wrong. Think: why the hell don’t they make flexible—
- Purchase flexible sink trap repair kit.
- Install flexible sink trap repair kit.
- Pull the escutcheon off the wall so you can finally attach the new p-trap to the old drain pipe. Note that your house was built in 1937 and your drain pipe is not threaded. It’s also embedded a half inch behind the wall and welded to something you can’t see.
- Stare.
- You can’t just unscrew the horizontal drain pipe, because it’s welded as a single unit. After installing a six inch 9 inch pipe extension to a flexible p-trap repair unit to the old p-trap (thus creating an loosely defined w-trap) leaving a one inch gap from the end of the flexible repair kit to the existing drain pipe sticking out of your wall.
- Beat. Head. Against. Sink.
- Go to Menards. Buy a rubber coupling. Work it on between the two pipes and voila! You have drain.
- Turn on the water.
- Check every section to find out why the water is not draining. Everything is perfect.
- Beat. Head. Against. Sink.
- Drag the vanity back into the dining room.
- Call Garrity plumbing. Your son will let him in while you’re at school.
- Come home to see your gorgeous vanity installed with what, even from a distance, you can see is perfect and sanguine grace. Underneath the sink, a gleaming chrome p-trap falls gracefully from the drain in the sink and disappears through a new escutcheon into the wall.
- On the dining room table is your self-installed w-trap lying on top of your bill ($532.00) and a note from Garrity in the margin: “Nice try.”
Urine Trouble
- Antique Yellow Fire Hydrant from Stock Photo
My family is different. We live on a different schedule than most families because [My Attorney] is an attorney. I stay at home and cook and clean and yell at the dogs, instead of a mom doing it. A family night consists of us watching Supernatural for three hours or maybe playing a video game. We do a lot of sushi. So it’s no surprise that things go awry on the occasion (hence this blog) and not terribly surprising when, five minutes before school starts, the kid comes out of his room and says: the dogs peed on my shoes.
The kid is growing. He’s almost eyeball to eyeball with me and the other day when I tried to get him to upstairs into the spooky second floor where we store all of our poltergeists and darkness, he flung his arm out to stop me and knocked my 46 year old ass through a window. It was like push, only he was giggling so I couldn’t be mad. We quit charting his growth on the kitchen door frame because we were afraid we’d saw through the joist. His feet are so big, the other day he clipped his toenails and the spent nail flew across the room and broke my collarbone.
SO he walks into this kitchen this morning as I’m scrambling to get out the door and warm up the car and he props a small sport yacht on the counter and says: they pooped on them too.
How and why does a dog drop a deuce on a pair of Nikes? Do they aim? Is it retaliation? Did we do something wrong? Is it dog language that means something, like pardon me, but I’d like a larger water dish, henceforth, my good man, (also: floooooop. There ya go).
I grab my boots, which are slightly oversized, and he plows his gargantuan feet into them and winces and says it’ll be ok, he doesn’t have gym. I tell him, great, get your jacket. He disappears. I hear: they peed on my jacket too.
MERDE!!!
I give him my old man jacket, a slick black windbreaker with an incongruous silver swatch up both sides. He stares at me like I’ve applied lipstick and rouge.
Get your bookbag.
He disappears into his room and suddenly yells something he’s not allowed to say, followed by:
They peed on my bookbag!
I swear to god, I’m having their bladder removed.
I Might Have Been Mentioned Somewhere . . .
Like in ChicGalleria.com, an online magazine unafraid to run my picture. Their bravery is singular and you should visit their site IMMEDIATELY!
Here’s some sample comments, in case you’re busy or you’re just too moved for words. Just cut & paste:
- My GOD that’s a good looking man!
- The writing in this book is so eloquent and smooth, like he’s not even, it’s like — words fail me.
- Is this a how-to book?
- Are there recipes?
- Isn’t this a woman’s magazine?
- That guy called his dog gay. HE CALLED HIS DOG GAY! His dog isn’t gay, it’s just a Border Collie. They can’t help it. They’re prancy!
Art Can Save the World
I was talking to my niece today about the weird circle of influence among artists. I am a writer but, really, I am more influenced by visual artists than other writers; a musician friend of mine is more influenced by writers than musicians; a visual artist I know has one of the best libraries in Chicago. So I offer this link as an opportunity for you to have your mind, how do we say, bah lown.
The Legless Photographer.
Dinner and a Booby
We run a tight ship around here at Casa de Death. No cussin. No runnin’ with scissors. No mixing metaphors. Also, we’re dead set against public nudity. This is not true of everyone in our neighborhood.
There’s a fantastic Mexican/Guatemalan restaurant a couple of blocks away. We love it. Eat there all the time. In fact, we don’t even call it by its actual name (because we’d get sued). We call it by the name of the exuberant owner. We call it Juan’s. Some families order Chinese. We say, let’s eat at Juan’s. And so there we were the other night, peacefully crunching through some lomo de Res con nopalitos, chicken flautas, and steak quesadillas when I casually glance across the street and notice a light come on in a second story window. Oh, how nice, I think. I didn’t know anyone lived over those nondescript businesses. Someone lives there. That’s where they live. There.
I’m bringing a forkful of lomo and nopalitas (steak and baby cactus) to my mouth when the person who lives there steps into view and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt they not only live there, they also poop there.
Most bathroom windows are made from frosted or pebbled glass. Not this one. This one was carved from pure gas plasma high definition glass. As I stared, agog, through the remarkably clear possibly magnifying unfrosted pane, an elderly woman removed her robe and sat on what I could only assume was a pissoir and opened what I could only assume was a magazine (Exhibitionist Monthly?) I watched in horror, steak and baby cactus dangling before my gaping mouth, as she thrust out her chin the tiniest little bit and, I assume, strained, ever so slightly.
[My Attorney]: What?
Me: Man, these tacos are scrumptious.
[My Attorney]: (not fooled for a minute) What.
My son: Dad? Why do you look scared?
Me: How’s your chicken oh my god!
The horror show across the street has gotten measurably worse. I will never be able to wipe it from my memory. As hard as I try now to wipe it from my mind, I cannot. I can’t wipe that image clear. It remains there where I can’t wipe it. Wipe. Wipe. Wipe.
Following my stricken countenance, [My Attoryney] and innocent child glance behind them and spit their flautas across the table. A flurry of Oh My Gods are whispered through fingers as we clamp our hands across our faces to wipe the horror from our horror wiped faces. Wipe.
Now we’re trying to finish our meal without calling attention to the free show happening across the street. [My Attorney] is facing mostly away and the boy child, so innocent, so pure, has his back to the window. Well, his chair has its back to the window. My kid is practicing yoga so he can eat while accidentally glancing out the window into the window.
Our waiter stops by, follows our glance across the street into the red light district, and pours cold water all over the guacamole. He tries to clean up but he keeps staring at our new friend who is now standing and putting on a shower cap. She does some sort of . . . examination? We’re not sure. All we know is the waiter poured water in the guac, the flautas, our empty margarita glasses, and onto the floor.
We figured she’d have to finish her ablutions and turn off the light but she did not. She continued to disappear and reappear, nekkid as all get out, as we finished our desert, politely refused to have our empty salsa cups refilled with coffee, and paid our check. She was doing some kind of pit maintenance as we drove away.
Two weeks later, we’re at a neighborhood party and mention this, purely out of an altruistic effort to perhaps communicate to this woman that her glass, she is not frosted. We mention it because a person at the party works in the building beneath the glaze de l’boudoir and we felt we had to tell her. Turns out the woman is not entirely shy and may not give a rats ass if people can see her flaunting her flab over their flautas.
I guess we’ll have to start requesting a table that faces the wall or perhaps only eat there in the daytime.
Alternate titles for this post:
“Rear Window”
“Room with a View”
DIY—Installing a Pre-Hung Screen Door in 10 Easy Steps.
Death By Children is about more than the nefarious and deadly machinations of our spawn or their efforts to render us twitching and pale from their ongoing appropriation of internet porn slang. It’s about a lifestyle, a way of going about your day with a kind of Zen focus, a way of being ever more self sufficient and capable. To that end, we present our ongoing series of Do It Yourself projects.
DIY #002: Pre-hung Screen Door.
Materials:
- Hammer
- Circular Saw
- Gaping hole in back porch
- Broken screen door hanging precariously on one hinge with sharpened metallic edges unspooling into a guantlet of razors
- Plumber’s wrench
- Three pocket knives (one non functional)
- Teflon Tape
- Duct tape
- Masking tape
- 7 to 12 screwdrivers of varying types and sizes
- Power drill
- Power drill
- Fairy dust
- Valium
Installation
- Once you have assembled your materials, turn off the power to the entire house.
- Look for the new screen door in the basement. Look for new screen door in the pantry. Look for new screen door at the neighbor’s house. Check out neighbor’s new Jag. Borrow a hammer.
- Go to hardware store and purchase DIY screen door—81 inches tall, 36 inches wide. Return home.
- Unpack contents of DIY screen door. Chase dogs away.
- Run after dogs and retrieve instructions. Measure doorway.
- Return to hardware store. Return door for DIY screen door 77 inches by 32 inches. Pay extra for not having all the parts or a receipt.
- Unpack contents of DIY screen door. Chase dogs away. Lay door out onto picnic table. Lay out all of your tools onto door. Drill 17 1/8 inch holes equal distances between top and bottom of door edge. Remove tools. Turn door over. Repeat. Think for a minute. Turn door over. Swing door around so the top (TOP) is toward the top (TOP) of workbench (PICNIC TABLE). Drill new holes.
- Attach door edge to door edge. Attempt to attach attached edges to gaping hole’s frame using hammer and power drill. Realize door weighs 714 pounds. Drop door on foot. Speak French. Leverage door on packing material until door is aligned with edge of gaping hole. Align alignment hole with 1/8 inch pre-drilled alignment—
- Drill a 1/8 inch alignment hole into Gaping Hole frame. Return to step 8.
- Attach DIY screen door to Gaping Hole frame using 34 1/8 inch machine screws, hammer, power drill, plumber’s wrench, blow torch, and teflon tape.
- Remove protective cover from pet entrance flap. Call dogs.
- Using the Power Drill, remove manufacturer’s screws from pet entrance flap. Using pliers, remove pet entrance flap from pet. Using duct tape, #13 jeweler’s hammer, and a whistle, reattach pet entrance flap to center of door.
- Dig through tool box for the hinge and cotter pin for the pneumatic door release arm. Attach to pre-installed door arm bracket and—
- Remove door. Turn exterior side (EXT) to exterior.
- Using power drill, salad tongs, a letter opener, and a power drill, reattach DIY screen door to Gaping Hole frame.
- Read instructions.
- Follow instructions reading: “Using pliers, move auto lock mechanism to full and fully extend pneumatic door release mechanism,” with perfect attention to detail. Attach fully extended pneumatic door release mechanism to door mechanism bracket. Attempt to close door.
- Apply upper body weight generously against DIY screen door. You should hear a “pop,” and a “loud metallic grinding,” whereupon your DIY door will drop three inches, slam itself halfway shut, and remain fixed in that position indefinitely.
Why My 11 Year Old Son Thought he Was Locked Out in the Dark.
He was.
But I didn’t know. It’s not some kind of post-redneck tough love program to rid him of his unnatural fear of life after sundown (He’s like a reverse vampire.) He tried the back door for reasons that will never become entirely clear, found it was locked (because of all the 11 year olds) and freaked out. Prudently deciding to alarm us of his presence, he knocked. Loudly. On the window. Which shattered.
Hope that clears that up.
Top 10 Rules for Replacing a Glass Window Pane Broken by Your Starving 11 Year Old Son who Thought He Was Locked Out in the Dark.
1. Look at son. Liberally apply hairy eyeball. Say “This is going to come out of your allowance.”
2. Assuming the glass is severely cracked, but not actually knocked out: liberally apply duct tape until the entire spidery shatter crack is covered. Say “I’ll get to it tomorrow.”
3. Three weeks later, respond to wife’s complaint that the excess masking tape looks like, as they say in France, merde, by carefully exactoing the edges of the masking tape so not a shred of tape exceeds the edges of the window frame. This should take about five hours and you need to go to the hardware store twice to buy a really expensive multi-head exacto knife and more tape.
4. Six months later, think about replacing the glass. Say out loud, “You know, I really ought to replace that glass.”
5. Merry Christmas.
6. After the spring thaw, go to the hardware store and spend no less than $78 on a glazing tool, glazing compound, window points, drill bits (you never know) a new roll of masking tape, one of those cool drain clog snake things, 19 feet of textured step pads, gardening stakes, and a 4 watt light bulb for the stove. Leave it all in the trunk of your car for through summer vacation.
7. After the summer heat subsides, go and replace the materials you left in the trunk of your car. Ask Glenn at ACE hardware to cut you a piece of glass. When he asks for dimensions, spit them out like you memorized them after carefully measuring. Glenn knows you didn’t, but Glenn’s not going to say anything because he’s been telling stories about your masterpiece home-improvement purchases for years. He uses you in his stand-up routine instead of making fun of people from Alabama. If he knew you were actually from Alabama, he’d never stop laughing.
8. Remove the wood frame pieces holding the glass in. Marvel at your skill. Clean all the old glazing putty off the wood. Sweep up. Get the glass out of the car. Carefully unwrap this perfect crystal square cut to your specifications. What power. What casual tool using elan. What do you do about the one inch gap between the wood and the top edge of the glass? You move the window up and down, as if there’s some middle position where the glass fills the frame. How? What? How did? How the hell did you not realize the panes weren’t perfect squares? Ok. Measure it again—where’s the tape measure? Shit. Oh, look, there’s a wooden ruler you bought for the kids. Measure the window. Don’t worry about the fact that the ruler doesn’t bend into the space so you can get an actual measurement. Eyeball it. Reapply tape.
10. Get Glenn to cut a new piece of glass. Act casual.
11. When you get home, lay a half inch thick rope of glazing putty all around the frame. Try and fit the glass in. It won’t because you gave Glenn OUTSIDE measurements instead of INSIDE measurements. The glass is exactly the same size as the hole in your door. Yeah, go ahead, try to force it.
11. Call the hardware store and ask for Glenn. Do this at least once a day until he’s not there. Go in and get a 1/4 inch shaved off the glass.
12. Using jeweler’s pliers (because you left your channel locks in the vanity you threw away two months ago) peel the dried putty out of the window frame. This should take a good three hours.
13. Replace glass using tub caulk because you put the glazing putty and the glass points down somewhere and you can’t find them. Make sure to use an ungodly amount of caulk so that when you press the glass into its new home, bright white silicon paste oozes out all over your door on the side you aren’t paying attention to. Also, since you don’t have the points, hold the glass in place with the bright blue electrical tape you bought as a joke three years ago (because you can’t find the duct tape (it’s in the trunk)). Replace the wooden slats of the frame. Buy another multi-head exacto knife (it’s in your trunk)Â and trim that blue tape.
Time: one year, four months, and nine days. Cost: $113.56.
Today, you are a man.
