2001-08-23 - 7:33 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Papa Don't Preach", Madonna

So, the park across the street is rapidly turning into a sort of penal colony for garden pests.

Trespass in Evelynne's garden and you'll be thrown into "The Park"!

Last night I dragged Poindexter out for a stroll, since I had a weird crick in my hipbone (caused by sticking my heavy booted foot out from the dirt bike in a particular skill I was practicing) and wanted to loosen it up. On the way back, I noticed in the light from the porch that my garden was COVERED with glistening slug trails. COVERED. In the daytime I can only see slug trails on one particular plant, for some reason, and the plant was fine so I had just ignored it.

So I took a closer look and realized that there were slugs EVERYWHERE. And they were EATING the plants they were on. I'd noticed that some of them weren't doing well, but I thought it was my poor gardening, not pests.

I started picking them up (with a stick, since I do not need that sticky shit on my fingers) and dropping them into an empty flowerpot. I picked up seven or eight and threw them in the park, came back and discovered MORE on the same plant, and more elsewhere. I think I picked up over 20 slugs. Big ones, little ones, plain ones, spotted ones.

It's really too bad they're all slimy and gross, because their antennae make them look a little cute.

There were so many slugs that I had to take my dad's advice and put out plates of beer. They are drawn to the beer, but they drown in it.

How stupid is that? Haven't they ever considered standing at the edge and just drinking it? Or do they get drunk and fall in, or what?

This morning I had ten drowned slugs in my beer plates. This evening there were two beginning to explore the beer plates. It was starting to rain, so I threw the slugs in the penal colony and threw the plates away. I may have to put out more plates tomorrow night.

I have completely lost my mind with the dirt biking. I can't believe I'm doing what I'm doing.

I ride the bike, at about 20 mph, I think, up over a curb, across four feet of mulch, and down the opposite curb of a parking lot tree island.

I am insane.

Especially because I like it.

I'm sort of scared the whole time, especially when I'm approaching the curb to go up. But the thing is, I don't feel like I'm out of control. The bike bucks underneath me, yes, but it never feels like the bike is going to run away with me. It doesn't skid or slide around.

Poindexter says I'm about ready for dirt, so the big plan this weekend is to go out to the riding place and start in some of the easy areas. I'll letcha know how it goes.

Our general contractor stopped by today. I call him "Cousin Benedict" because he has a resemblance to my cousin. You may recall that this guy is the reason we have a place to ride our dirt bikes.

So, Poindexter took him downstairs and opened the garage door and pointed. "Cousin Benedict" (okay, CB just for this entry) walked into the garage and started to laugh and said, "Oh my god." We talked for a while about what I'd been doing and how I liked it.

Later CB mentioned that he'd proposed to his girlfriend and got a "yes" out of her. He's 23, and the fiancee still has a year of school left. His mother is busy telling him he's too young to be getting married. We talked about weddings a bit, and how his fiancee wanted a big fancy wedding, and about how Poindexter and I had wanted to elope. How horrified I was at the whole wedding-planning thing. "I'm not really a girl," I said, gesturing at the bikes and my VW, which CB likes a lot.

Later Poindexter mentioned that he had to bite his tongue to keep from telling CB that his mother is right, that he IS too young to be getting married. When I asked if it was because CB was only 23 or because of something about CB that seemed too young, Poindexter said, "Both."

I don't know what I think about that. I think some 23-year-olds are ready. It was my 24th birthday when I got reacquainted with Poindexter and realized that he was the kind of person I could marry. The two years in between my 24th and 26th birthdays were spent mainly recovering from my relationship with Sam (I was racked with tremendous guilt for breaking up with him even though I knew it was the right thing, plus with a five-year relationship it takes time to reorient oneself, sort of), and getting used to the idea that I had actually met someone I wanted to marry after years of thinking marriage was a trap.

The really important year, for me, was the year between college graduation and Poindexter, when Sam got relegated to the back burner, and I lived my life almost completely independently. Some people have that kind of independence in college, so who's to say definitively that a 23-year-old is too young to get married? If I had broken up with Sam earlier and had experienced that kind of independence earlier in life, I might've been ready for marriage at 23. My relationship with Sam was a mature one in terms of how we treated each other, how we dealt with being two separate people, and how we dealt with conflicts -- the reason we broke up was a basic incompatibility that I could no longer live with. So I think it really depends on the person.

Besides that, I've known what kind of man I wanted to marry since I was 16. I have "perfect man" notes from back then, and Poindexter fits them all except the "likes to go out dancing" one. :) It was just a matter of actually FINDING this perfect man, really, and not getting impatient and marrying the wrong one.

OK, Kevin asked for details on the wondeful new floor guy, so here goes.

First I need to explain a particular concept that Poindexter calls "shoe molding". I don't know if it's the right term. It's the thin horizontal piece of wood that goes over the space where the wall meets the floor:

Notice how it overlaps the floor a bit -- the ends of the wood planks fit underneath the shoe molding.

All right, now, the first guy who did our floor was one of those people who seemed overly cocky. In a near-condescending sort of way. Questions were met with a "Don't you worry, we'll do a good job" sort of attitude. As he was working, he'd say, "Yes, I think we're doing very well, things are going well."

That's fine, I guess, if it's true, but I don't like this kind of attitude. Let the work speak for itself, is my motto.

And his work didn't have anything good to say for itself. When we looked at the boards later, we found all sorts of evidence of sloppiness. Lots of unfilled nail holes. Nail holes around the edges where he could have hidden them under the shoe molding. Odd scratches on the shoe molding in several places (we found out later it was because they bumped one of their vibrating machines against it). They used warped and/or improperly shaped boards (leaving big gaps between boards) rather than throw out the bad ones (the boards are prefinished). The closet was FULL of bad boards and ugly nail holes.

Not to mention they managed to break our chandelier (an "alabaster" bowl) -- how, I don't know -- and put our extremely heavy TV on the couch, where they could have stretched or ripped the leather.

Underneath the shoe molding, the boards meeting the wall looked like this:

Technically this is OKAY, since the shoe molding hides it, but it's still sloppy. How hard is it to cut the end of the board a little farther along so that it's within 1/4" of the wall?

Now, take the new guy.

He took a look at the bad floor, which Poindexter had riddled with blue tape on the bad areas, and showed me what he could avoid doing, and what he couldn't, and WHY.

The first thing he told me -- and I took it with a grain of salt -- was that when he works in someone's house, he does that work as though he's doing it in his own house, "because it's YOUR house, and you are PAYING me to do this." And "if you like my work, and someone comes by and says, 'Who did your floor', you say I did it, and it brings me more business." He told me that he's had former clients move and want new floors, and they would call and specifically ask for him.

This new guy, though, he meant what he said.

He treated our belongings with great care. He kept everything exactly as it was except when he was moving them. He didn't break anything. He encouraged us to check his work often to make sure we were happy with it.

He lay the boards out and inspected them carefully before installing to make sure there were no defective boards so there would be no gaps, and there weren't. He hid the nails around the edges underneath the shoe molding. The closet looked gorgeous, just like the rest of the floor. No scratches anywhere. And the boards underneath the shoe molding looked like this:

Now, like I said, it wasn't necessary for the boards to be that perfect, but the fact that they were is an indication that this guy cares about doing things carefully! So I appreciated it.

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