Freddogg Off The Chain

A kitchen project becomes a monumental undertaking like whoever gets to carry Aunt Rose to her final resting place but I digress.
The hardest part became the easiest, ripping drywall tape off a ceiling and re-doing the joints over three coats of skimming and sanding.
My block out paint rubberized in progress and I had to keep stopping to pull wet pieces out of the paint. Hey, did I say this was interesting? I did get to play a jazz CD my soul friend Eric made for me and I hit repeat for the ‘Baby it’s on Tonight” track and my wife who saw me pawing the vinyl floor said, ”I hope that lyric means paint.”
Two coats and the walls looked great. Susan painted a door and slider on Friday night while I covered the Eagles. I returned late to the Kitchen to an anxious family where not even the dog wags her tail when I come through the door—which was now a burnt orange and just looked way wrong. It was supposed to be deep brown with a tint of red.
Then the trim color which was supposed to be a sort of Williamsburg Bracken House Brown was more like Golden Mustard’s yellow.
We went to the Sherwin Williams store where all the real painters hang not at Lowe’s even though Consumer Reports magazine rated them the best paint because of a 10 million dollar kickback.
It was cool because it was good old American practicality like “hand me your old stuff and we’ll throw it away and make new stuff and not charge you.” Then we changed to high gloss green on the door and were given some 60 dollar a gallon designer paint for 27 and life was good and now the kitchen looks so cool except the store that was supposed to order my vinyl didn’t because they didn’t think I was serious even though I’ve known them forever and so I reauthorized and acted serious so now I’m back on the schedule.
Sunday was change the florescent light fixture day with the help of my neighbor John who makes Rainman look like Mr. Flexibility. John wouldn’t use green wire nuts on black wires because even though the wires don’t know green means ground but brown doesn’t mean anything so John would mix brown nuts with black and white wires but refused to use green This job went on all afternoon because one light fixture after another from Lowe’s was defective and it dawned on me that Americans spend a lot of time returning defective parts that American companies then send to Central America because of the NAFTA treaty. Finally we got it to work and John said he would give me a call later to carry his 39 inch Sony CRT television to the second floor of his house.
Everything was done except I needed to order a wheel from the front of my refrigerator because one of the two front wheels had gone missing—not broken because then I would have found it-it is just missing.
I called the SEARS 1-800 number and to borrow from Rainman “Sears Sucks”. I negotiated the automated choice system to parts and service listened to stupid music while on hold five times and each time a person would get on and ask, ”Can I help you?” then they would disappear and I’d be handed off to another person finally I said to this girl, ”Will you all stop asking me if you can help me and actually help me?”
We found a wheel together and we will always have that like Bogart and Bergman have Paris but then she said there were two screws that went with the part and asked if I had the screws and I’m like, ”Yes, I lost the wheels but I’ve been saving these two screws" and she said “good because I’m not allowed to sell you the screws because there’s a Service Center near you" and I said “No there isn’t and are we still talking about screws” and she said “Salisbury” and I told her Salisbury was in another state and she said ”yes but less than 100 miles from your house” then I said “Are you nuts” and she said “Would you like to buy a 4 dollar brush to clean your coils?”
I cut my losses, ordered the wheel for 37 dollars overnight shipping figuring I’ll get Rainman John who has been saving screws for the last 3O years to help me so if he ain’t got them then they don’t make them.
I think our workforce is in real trouble. Mostly automatons with no imagination who spend leisure time surfing porn sites.

Peace Freddogg