As you may have already read, I had to move back in with my mother recently. Had some roommate drama which ended in me footing the bill for “our” apartment. This led me to sublease the place and blah blah blah. The lease is thankfully over in the middle of February. I’m sick of paying two rents.

Anyway, mom and I constantly go round and round on the same topic because we are equally thickheaded and ridiculously stubborn (like most Germans). It’s a thing.

One of the things that bothers my mom to no end is a) leaving the second level bathroom door open and b) leaving the toilet seat and/or lid up.

Now, I understand about the door. When we have guests, there’s no need to bombard them with the sight of the bathroom. I get that.

However, I don’t like putting the lid down. The actual seat needs to stay down, sure. Men are nasty and don’t even pay attention to how often they splash on the toilet rim and I shouldn’t be forced to move that unsightly lid. Since my brother’s back in town for the holidays, there’s been quite a bit more discussion on this topic than usual because he doesn’t bother putting the seat down anymore. I suppose living in male-only barracks will do that to a guy.

But the lid? What? Who cares?

You see, when I was in my late teens I got just a wee bit too drunk for my own good. When I went to use the bathroom, I didn’t pay attention to the fact that the lid was down and promptly pissed all over the toilet instead of IN it. You can imagine my disgust and embarrassment (even though no one else knew… well, except for you all). Ever since that day, my philosophy has been to leave the lid up. Makes sense, right? Right.

Two days ago my mom was complaining about the lid being up, yet again.

Mom: “You guys NEED to put the lid down on the toilet.”
Me: “No! The lid stays up, just the seat goes down. I don’t want to be fumbling with the lid at 3am. It’s a pain in the ass.”
Mom: In her most crestfallen voice, “but my hamsters drowned in the toilet!”
Me: “Mom, we don’t have any hamsters! Yours died almost 40 years ago!!”
Mom: “Probably longer.”

…

I rest my case. Toilet seat down, lid stays up.

End of story.

Many years ago, I was the proud owner of a ‘94 Geo Metro LSI, which I had for eight years. It was a lot like the Little Engine That Could (and I mean that literally).

Due to it’s lackluster abilities and less-than-frequent upkeep, everything on this car went to shit. I mean, everything.

While the ‘rents were still together and happy, prior to my brother’s entry into the Marines and while I was still in college, we lived in a ridiculously expensive single family home in a place called Kingstowne. Right.

Picture million dollar houses with expensive BMW, Mercedes and Lexus vehicles… and my rusty Geo.

Oh, it was great.

At one point I really needed the routers replaced, so I enlisted my brother and his friend, Jack, to do the grunt work. To say that the two of them were borderline crazy might be an understatement. To acknowledge that these two, especially when together, wreaked total havoc would certainly be more appropriate.

Maybe I should’ve thought of that before enlisting their assistance?

Now, picture a post-9/11 Northern Virginian town with a heavy military presence. You may know where I’m going with this…

While they worked on my car outside, I was in my room above the garage. As usual, I was futzing online.

Suddenly, I hear this HUGE explosion that rocked the entire neighborhood. You can say that my heart lepped through my throat and be completely accurate. So, I ran downstairs to see where the commotion was coming from. As I opened the front door, I noticed several neighbors mimicking my behavior because the big boomy noise wasn’t exactly expected.

I see Jack standing next to my car, completely stunned by what had just happened and staring blankly at the spot where my wheel normally was.

…uh, oh.

He’d used a quarter stick of dynamite to blow the router off my car. The rust and its old age were making it exceedingly difficult to pull off and being that my brother & Jack fixed cars for fun, that was saying a lot.

Right.

Dynamite.

On my car.

Dy-na-mite.

To this day, Jack’s response to the whole thing is a sheepish, “Hey, it worked. Beautifully, I might add.”

He’s right.

It did work.

I’ve had this blog for a lil’ while – posted some drivel, deleted some drivel, posted some more drivel, so on and so forth.

I enjoy this little space in the world wide web. Maybe, I can actually stick to posting regularly for once.

We’ll see.