The Mike Stories, Pt. 25

Mike is really on a roll today!

He is currently in the front room attempting to re-cover this old chair of mine. it's a chair that I "stole" ages ago from a shared house where I lived back in my college days. it had been there since before I moved in... and one by one all of the roommates who pre-dated me moved out, yet the chair was still there. I always liked the chair, and since it had become owner-less, it didn't seem like it would be much of a bother to anyone if I took it with me. (no one ever complained).

Mike has never re-covered a chair before, so this is a giant experiment. the chair is probably at least as old as I am, and had a pretty war torn look to it, so when Mike suggested giving this a try, I didn't imagine that the poor thing could look much worse. I was just reminding him, though, that if my chair looks like a trash heap when he's done, we're getting it professionally re-covered. Mike then told me that there was some structural damage to the chair, and told me it would make more sense to just buy a new chair if it came to that. Nothing dangerous - just nothing worth paying to have professionally re-covered. I must have looked disappointed, because he then assured me that he would do his best to make it look nice in the end.

I told him I would really appreciate it if the chair turned out nice, since I've always liked the chair. it's a comfortable one for curling up and reading a book. My giant bookshelf is right next to it in the front room, and we're planning to get another bookshelf for that area soon - so I told him that if he pulls it off, it'll be like our own little library in there. I told him that I've always wanted my own library, but that I always imagined a spiral staircase leading up to it... to which he replied "me too!!!!"

He then proceeded to tell me how we should alter our front room/dining room space to accommodate a home library that could potentially include a spiral staircase. The actual conversation at this point involved a LOT of pointing, and I will do my best to describe this very visually based conversation legibly. Ready?:

Our front door opens into a small living-room like front room with vaulted ceilings. That space opens directly into the dining room. There is a catwalk-like horizontal beam dividing the two spaces. It's placed at about the right height for an average ceiling. (the cats love to hang out on it).

Mike proposed converting the beam into a ceiling/floor space above the dining room, thus creating an extra room above the dining room. The vaulted ceiling in that area slopes, so that it is about 3 ft higher than the beam at the lowest point, and perhaps 7 or 8 ft higher than the beam at the highest point (keep in mind here that I have dyscalculia, and my estimations here are based solely on my conversation with Mike, and the estimates that he stated - which in all probability are wrong)

I started laughing hysterically at this idea, and asked him what's he going to do? crawl around in his new library up there? He said no, he can stand up at the taller side - so I asked him what's he going to do with the short side? put in bean bag chairs? (he liked that idea very much). Then I proposed converting it into our kid's bedroom so we don't have to give up one of the other rooms when we have a kid. (this was followed by a funny conversation about how we could send the kid to their bedroom when they misbehave at the dinner table, directly below their room.

The light in the dining room, of course, hangs down from the vaulted ceiling. I asked him what's he going to do, put a hole in the floor of his new room to accommodate the light? then you could also look down and stare at unsuspecting guests during dinner.

In the end I pointed out that any future potential buyers probably wouldn't love the strange loft room... but considering that I don't ever want to move, I invited him to do whatever he wants!

The Mike Stories, Pt. 24

Me: I'm hungry. What should we have for dinner? I have another frozen pizza in there...
Mike: eh. (accompanied by a disappointed look)
Me: You don't seem happy about that?
Mike: I'm trying to eat healthy, remember?
Me: Great! You're turn then - what's for dinner??
Mike: hmph! FROZEN PIZZA!
Me: (laughing) That's going in the Mike Stories!
Mike: (also laughing) You're funny!
Me: No - YOU'RE funny!!

(after several minutes)

Mike: so, I bought a shower curtain liner for the upstairs bathroom... because it's been like 2 years (he means the guest room bathroom that we rarely use)
Me: cool
Mike: so we can get an outer one in any color
Me: get like a fabric one you mean?
Mike: yeah, so I was thinking if it's just an outer one and it's fabric, that wouldn't be that hard because it's basically like a sheet...
Me: you mean make it? because I'm not sewing anything.
Mike: oh. yeah, well we can buy it too....
Me: does this need to go in the Mike Stories too?
Mike: (gives me a look like he's trying to fight the urge to say yes) ;)

**the above conversation is an excellent example of how Mike starts explaining things from somewhere in the middle, and I get to try to read his mind.

The Mike Stories, Pt. 23

Last weekend I came downstairs after a nice morning of sleeping in, and was just on my way to the kitchen to get breakfast - when I ran into Mike. He was just standing there in his bathrobe with two hand weights. That's it. He was just standing there with Morpheus, not doing anything. When I asked him what he was doing, he said he didn't know. When I told him he was a strange man - he responded with "maybe you should take a picture" - and so I did. Here it is (enjoy):

A couple of nights ago Mike and I were upstairs getting ready for bed, and he seemed quite proud of himself when he asked me if I had been online lately. I hesitantly told him that I had, but that I had no idea what he was so proud of himself for, and that considering the internet is a rather large place - he'd have to narrow it down a bit for me.

Then he asked if I had seen his twitter postings. I told him that I had not, and asked what he had posted. He told me he had posted a bunch of stuff, and that I should go read them. I told him that my computer was downstairs, and that I didn't feel like going down just for that, since I was on my way to bed. He seemed very anxious for me to see it, and so I told him maybe HE should go downstairs and get a laptop so he could pull it up for me. And so then he pulls out his laptop from right under the bed and starts looking it up.

At that point, I noticed his browser was in Spanish - so I asked him about that, and he said he had set it up that way. I think Spanish Mike is slowly taking over, and before I know it, I'm going to have an exclusively Spanish husband. At least he'll come in handy if we make it down to Costa Rica in March.

So then he finally gets his twitter page up, and he can't figure out how to navigate it. He started in complaining about how it didn't work right and was hard to navigate. I snatched the laptop away from him and found what he was trying to show me in about 2 clicks. (He thought I was a genius - to which I told him he just needed better reasoning skills).

And what was the big mysterious thing he was so proud of, you wonder? He had discovered that he could use voice recognition technology on his phone to produce tweets, and he had been tweeting all the way home during his commute. He even tweeted two photos, and after seeing them I told him that he should not be allowed to drive if he was just going to focus his attention on tweeting and taking photos instead of watching the road. Want to see it for yourself? The date in question was Jan 19th. (I find it best to back up to the first post of a particular day, and read up rather than down, so you can see the chronological progression of his insanity)

The Mike Stories, Pt. 22

Mike pulled most of the shelving out of the pantry....

Here's a shot inside the pantry.... not only is most of the shelving missing, but he's opened the trap door to go under the house. it's very creep down there.

A look down into the creepy under-the-house crawl space.... yes, that is Mike's foot

And finally, here he is coming back up from the creepy underground. and yes, that is a head lamp my nerdy husband is wearing. :)

Mike claims he was down there doing some task related to turning off the electricity flowing to power outlets that were in the deck that he recently pulled out of the back yard. but lets face it - he probably just wanted to play around under he house & screw around with the nicely organized pantry.

The Mike Stories, Pt. 21

So today I learned that Mike's steam cleaning method involves heating water on the stove to boiling, then tossing it around the living room (see below). Eventually he does get around to using our steam cleaner to suck up the water - but I thought it looked like a lot of the mischievous sort of fun to throw water all over the carpet while I was watching him work earlier.

I'm not too fond of the last step, however, which involves trying to dry the resulting wet carpet. not only does it take forever, but Mike goes ahead and brings every fan we own into the living room area and sets them on high. the wind factor in my living room is annoying this time of year, as is the fan noise!

Here's a fun conversation Mike and I had in the kitchen while he was on the water-boiling phase of this carpet cleaning adventure (and I was working on my madder dyeing project - see my other blog for details):

Mike: you shouldn't be in here
Me: but I'm dyeing!
Mike: you're dying?
Me: uh-huh!
Mike: oooooh - that kind of dyeing!

The Mike Stories, Pt. 20

One a couple of weeks ago, I found a roll of toilet paper caught between the blankets when I was trying to go to bed. I made a face and asked Mike about it, which sparked the following conversation:

Mike: you never know when you might need it!
Me: why might i need toilet paper in bed? do you think i'm going to pee the bed?
Mike: you can't be too careful.
Me: so that applies to the possibility that i might pee the bed, but not to fire safety and the possibility that you might burn down the house?
Mike I'm not going to burn down the house!
Me: right.... so that's a good reason not to install the smoke detector, but you still think you need toilet paper in the bed?
Mike: yes!

And then just now, we're getting ready to leave the house to go out to a late lunch, because I've been trapped in the house for 36 hours watching my madder experiment while it sat on the stove. (read my other blog for details). Here's how that conversation went:

Mike: you should go get ready so we can go. I'm hungry.
Me: I'm almost ready, I just need to put my clothes on.
Mike: yeah, that takes a long time. first you have to look at your hair, then you have to check your pores....
Me: check my pores huh?
Mike: yeah, that's why girls get that magnifying mirror isn't it? i've seen Sex and the City, I know what's up!
Me: you are a funny man, Mr. Roshak!

[little does he know that i skipped checking my pores in favor of writing this latest Mike Stories episode for you] ;)

The Mike Stories, Pt. 19

Mike and I were sitting in the living room watching tv and doing homework when a commercial for the new Wii Pictionary game came on. Mike suggested that I should invite my artist friends over to play pictionary with me. I told him that was an awesome idea, and agreed that I should... he wanted to know if i would put out a variety of different drawing media for use during such a game of pictionary - why not?!

then I asked him if he would be intimidated playing pictionary with a room full of artists. he said "no, why should I? it's all about the guessing!" then I reminded him that when he draws, maybe nobody would know what it was.... that was when it dawned on him that he would be on a team, and he could lose the game for his team if he couldn't draw something in such a way that people could figure out what it was.... so he said "yeah.... maybe i'll be scorekeeper then!"