Delusional Men

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My current house is much newer than the one I had in Scottsdale and it’s also (unfortunately) a lot bigger. This is Texas. The one in Scottsdale was at that age where everything starts breaking for the first time and I lived with a revolving door of service repair people coming in and out with their dreaded 4-hour window of when they would show up.

“What if we both worked?!” I exclaimed to my husband. “Who would sit here and wait?! Do people hire a concierge to sit and wait or what?!  How do they afford that??” My husband has no idea what to say when I say things like that so he likely doesn’t say anything.

And if he does take the chance and say something like, “I know,” I would likely say, “Wait, you mean you know or you don’t know?!” which is precisely why he likely won’t say anything.

So the good news is, I don’t have to wait for service repair people nearly as often in this house because it’s so new, but when I do, I still have the problem of the 4-hour window and one other little thing. Every service repair man (and they are always men) seem to think I want to become an expert on whatever they are fixing.

The fridge guy gave me a “10 Point Understand your Refrigerator” course while my eyes rolled back into my head. The automatic awning man was positive my life would be enhanced by understanding the hidden mechanics unseen by the normal human eye, while I drooled. The handyman spouted the benefits of grout brands for the shower while I finished applying my mascara.

I want to say, “Just shut up and fix it! I don’t care how it works and I don’t want to hear you yak! I’ll never fix it myself as long as I live so I don’t need to know all this shit and I just want it to work so quit talking and fix it!” But, I don’t want to be a bitch not only because I am a nice person but also because these guys can be very passive aggressive and could put a scorpion in my ice cube bin, a paper clip into those hidden mechanics or use the crappy grout!

Recently Airtron was sending someone to diagnose and fix a problem I was having in my home office. In that room, I was freezing in the winter and way too hot in the summer. My window on the day the guy was to come was from 8 am to noon. They promised a call 30 minutes prior to arrival so I could zip home from the grocery store or wherever I might be and not just sit home and wait. I have never in my entire life had a service repair guy come in the first two hours of a window, so after staying up late with friends who came for dinner the night before, I set my alarm for 8 am.

Next morning, waddling in my bathrobe toward coffee, I saw the guy parked in front of my house in his van! OMG, my hair was in turmoil, mascara was all over my face and I hadn’t even brushed my teeth! Fortunately, he was typing on a device and I was able to get the mascara off, brush, put some clothes on, rein in the hair and by the time I opened the door I was in a reasonably presentable state.

Garth went directly to the attic. I’ve never had an attic before living in Dallas. I don’t understand why we need attics here when we never needed them in any other house I’ve ever lived in. And, I’ve lived in many.  (See one of my very early posts “I’ve got an attic??” )

He was up there a long time and finally came down and said with enthusiasm, “When they installed this baby, they reversed the supply and return on the vent which means hot air is being sucked OUT of your home office in the winter and cold air is being sucked OUT in the summer!”

“Okay, whatever,” I said, “did you you fix it?.”

Like the others, Garth was excited and said he did fix it but wanted to educate me and launched into a monologue about the mechanics of the evils of when supply and return are reversed.  OMG, I tried to employ body language to demonstrate I was not interested to no avail.  Once again, I was trapped.

I quietly seethed while visions of sugar plums and him being out of my house danced in my head.

I Have An Attic?

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I was so busy preparing for our move from Scottsdale and my husband Steve was swamped in his new position with Prime Lending in Dallas that we had to buy a house and buy it quickly. I flew out to join him here and we did it in one day. The realtor had only a few houses lined up to show us after I nixed anything over 5000 square feet. Steve wanted a new build and it’s hard to find one smaller than that in the neighborhoods we liked. So, we have a brand new, gorgeous 4800 square foot house and it’s considered modest by Dallas’ standards. The media room is so big my mom said we should put in an ice skating rink. Then later when she heard through the grapevine I really wanted an elephant she said, “Perfect! They have room for it!”

The move was beyond stressful, nervous breakdown kind of stressful. The culture shock was beyond belief and I found myself completely disoriented. Steve was working long hours and traveling so I was mostly alone dealing with dogs sick as dogs, me sick as dogs, me with 18 mosquito bites and allergies so bad I was positive I had lung cancer. Then there were the projects I was overseeing; building a pool, installing landscaping, removing a rotted out 60 foot Red Oak tree from our front yard and grinding out the roots (I decided to save money and did that one myself), planning interior design and getting the technology in the house orchestrated which, as everyone knows, is rocket science these days.

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There I am taking that pesky, rotten tree down.

Anyway, one day this guy was here; I can’t remember what he was doing but it had something to do with paint.
“Where is the leftover paint?” he asked me.
“There isn’t any,” I said. “They didn’t leave extra paint, extra tiles, nothing!”
“That would be very unusual,” he said.
“I know,” I said, “I’ve owned a lot of houses and there’s always extra paint and tile. But I’ve been all through the garage and there is nothing there!”
“It wouldn’t be in the garage”, he said, “It would be in the attic.”
“I don’t have an attic,” I said.
“Yes you do,” he said, “All newer homes have attics.”
“No they don’t!” I demanded. “I’ve had several newer homes over the years and none of them have ever had attics!”

You’d think after living in the house for over two weeks I would have noticed a pull cord hanging a quarter of the way down between the ceiling and the floor from a trap door in the upstairs hallway. But I didn’t.

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