I Can’t Make It Rain, But I Can Make Money Disappear

My personal interior-decorator-for-life XFE and I spent the weekend doing lots of really glamorous stuff, including shopping for new toilet seat lids and a trash can for the new house.

What we didn’t realize is that we would need to get a bank loan before making these types of everyday home purchases.

First off, toilet seats. Yes, the house did come with them. But they were the cheap plastic version. My delicate buttocks demand something a bit more substantial. Something sturdier.

Weird fact: the toilet seats we saw at our local Lowe’s only came in cheap plastic or wood. I was quite surprised by two things: that they don’t come in porcelain (since that’s what the rest of the toilet is made of) and that they do come in wood. Seems like an odd choice of material. Now I’ll be worrying about splinters, no doubt.

After giving serious thought to whether I could break it and liberate the contents to pay for our purchases, I passed up the version with money suspended in it.

Instead, I went for what I hope will be sturdy wooden toilet seat that I can sit on while staring up into my bathroom skylight for hours on end and wondering where all our money went when we bought a house that we were sure was move-in ready. The price for the version we bought was $25, but since we have three bathrooms, things added up quickly.

We also bought a trash can, a seemingly mundane kitchen item that ended up costing us $80. The selection was fairly baffling, and in the end, we were just worn down and became numb to the ridiculous pricing. I pretty sure the final conversation went like this:

XFE: Do you want the semi-circular one or the oval slim profile one?

ME: When can we go eat?

XFE: After you make a decision. Now, brushed metal or polished?

ME: What’s this for again?

We currently have a trash compactor in our (soon-to-be ex) kitchen. We love that trash compactor. It is, without a doubt, the thing we’ll probably miss most.

I was describing the wonders of our new $80 trash can (surely such a treasure deserves to be honored in poetry shouted from the rooftops) to a co-worker today. One of the features is a lid lock. My co-worker looked at me oddly until I went on to explain the lock helps keep the lid up while you peel a potato or something. BUT, a locking trash can might be far more practical for us since I like to throw money away. Literally.

Last week, I was cleaning out my purse and came across one of those bank cash envelopes that I had taken with me to Costa Rica. I threw the envelope out. Then on Friday, I remembered that there might be some money still in that envelope. About $110. Buried under a week’s worth of trash. We (meaning XFE) retrieved it, washed it, and set it on the window sill to dry. XFE has claimed it as a finder’s fee, which seems very fair.

We continued on our home improvement streak by trying to burn down the house we currently rent making lamb kebabs on the grill. Flames shot out of the back of the grill, but I don’t care. These kebabs (which XFE makes with feta and a whole bunch of Turkish spices) are worth the visits from the neighborhood fire marshall.

We had slightly better luck with bacon wrapped scallops on Sunday, which were also the bomb.com. Of course, there was a slight glitch: We’d already moved our scallop skewers (different from our kebab skewers, which are larger. What, you don’t have an array of grilling skewers?) to the new house. XFE also went and retrieved the proper skewers so we could have these delicious scallops alongside a caprese salad and wonderful Australian viognier.

Then Sunday night, we stumbled upon this gem from the Discovery Channel. It was a documentary (using that term very loosely here, Discovery) about mermaids and the vast government conspiracy to cover up their existence. I was OBSESSED with mermaids when I was a kid (the movie Splash had a very lasting impact on me), so of course, I was totally convinced that mermaids were real, and of course, had evolved from so-called aquatic apes. I mean, they had actual NOAA scientists on there. So, it must be legit, right? Or not.

Wait, maybe Dr. Paul Robertson really does exist but there’s a conspiracy to cover up HIS existence. Now my head hurts. If you need me, I’ll to be sitting in the bathroom on my fancy wooden toilet seat.