It’s My Blogoversary!

You wouldn’t know it on account of my deleting all my old archives, but I started this little blog five years ago. Since then, I’ve flung over 700 posts out into the interwebz. Over the years, My Other Car is a TARDIS has had many forms: an outlet, a family record, book reviewing, a writer’s blog, and – at times – a soapbox to stand on when I grow weary of shitheads. I’m not a big famous blog but I do have 28 Google connect followers and 45 reader subscribers, which means more people I don’t know than do read it and that, to me, is pretty cool.

I’ve began changing things around a bit, as I do every year. I think I tried too hard to revamp things this year into a writer’s blog, when, really, this isn’t the space for high ambitions. I thought I was going to give indie authorhood a go, but my children and my life grabbed me by the elbow and whispered, “not yet.”

So I’ll be back in the saddle next week. Some new segments, a little more art & reviews (like I used to do) and some of the same old essays on social issues and politics you’ve grown to love or hate.

Until then, please enjoy the post that started it all, entered on September 29th, 2007, my very first step into the world of blogging:

“RENOVATIONS”

Our house is a Katrina-grade shitstorm and I don't own a pair of waders. Last month, Ma and Pa B offered to have their tile guy lay the leftover tile from their renovations in our kitchen and laundry room. I was ecstatic, but of course that meant we'd have to paint the cabinets, then the walls, buy a larger pantry, get new countertops and buy a new sink and faucet because I am a woman and that is a woman's natural progression of a simple re-decoration. So, Darin and I cleaned out our kitchen, put our stove, washing machine and dryer into our dining room and masked everything off. It was all set until...
The tile guy turned out to be a registered sex offender and we had to nix his services. (It was especially awesome when he confessed his transgressions over the phone to me, which included an over-the-pants vaginal zerbert applied to one of his daughter's 11 year old friends that I can never 'un-hear' no matter how hard I try.) We finally found another tile guy who did a half-assed job and are now trying to paint our cabinets and walls in 30 minute increments because the kids really don't allow for much more than that in a day, which means...
For weeks on end, we have been cooking our meals on the floor of our kitchen with our toaster oven and a little electric cooktop. We have been living among paint cans and cracker boxes, piles of dirty laundry and toys. We have been dressing in mis-matched sweats, pajamas and just our underpants some days on account of the Indian summer temperatures. Anytime I need to do anything, I have to step over something, find something, unplug something to plug something else in, pick something up, try to find something else because [Good Girl] has absconded with it and then I have to give up anyway because [Goblin Queen] will have no doubt started to cry during all that time I spent doing everything but what I needed to in the first place.
These are the times I pray to a just and benevolent god that none of my neighbors can see in our windows at night to witness the half-naked, dirty, feral family hovered over their toaster oven dinner on the kitchen floor surrounded by tools and garbage. Oftentimes, [Good Girl], covered by nothing but her tinkerbell undies and red marker, will fling open the living room curtains to yell 'Hi there!' to our neighbors and I will scream, "NO!" because I am afraid someone will be walking down the block at that precise moment to witness my lack of control over the household. They will see a wild girl covered in a loincloth and warpaint and her mother in the background, topless, nursing a naked baby in one hand and nursing a beer in the other, up to their knees in a hurricane's aftermath. (And we're on the top of a hill so this summer's flooding is no excuse.)
Needless to say, I am persistently on the verge of freaking-out in a spectacular way, but I manage to hold it together and tell myself this nightmare will be over soon. In another week I will have a brand new kitchen - a place for everything and everything in it's place. A new kitchen will make me a better mother. A better person. A new kitchen will allow me to open my curtains again without fear of being seen in a sty. As for the wild children and nightly cocktail... I don't care so much what people think about that.