Good columnists usually have a purpose to their writing. Opinions they wish to convey, points they'd like to make, reasons for putting pen to paper. It's a good thing I'm not a good columnist.
Sometimes writing these weekly missives is little more than stress relief, a necessary means to exorcise the past week and purge those memories from my skull. This is one of those times. If you're looking to grow as a person or learn a valuable life lesson, pick a different article. Forgive me, but I just need to whine about my weekend. There are good weekends, there are bad weekends... and then there are SHANE weekends. Set phasers to "complain," Captain Kirk.
I suppose it all started on Friday. Thanks to the pandemic, I've been getting to know the room I normally pass through on the way to more exciting rooms: my kitchen. After cooking at home far more than usual, I'm getting irked at the lack of storage space in my kitchen. Truth is, I have a ton of cabinets in there - they're just jam-packed with silly stuff I never use. The other day, I had to pull out seven items just to get to my one lonely saucepan. I recently gave up after fifteen minutes of searching for a cutting board I definitely own but couldn't find.
Not once did it dawn on me that perhaps I could reorganize and get rid of some of this junk I never use. When the thought finally crossed my mind last week, it was a revelation. For instance, I have a full tea service in my cabinet. I don't drink tea. I have a mug that says "I Still Look Sexy at 40," which is a SUPER important thing to have because (a) I often rely on tableware to validate my sexual self-confidence, and (b) I'm 50.
On a mission, I walked into the kitchen, opened all my cabinets, and set to work. And by "set to work," I looked at things for 30 seconds, realized I had no idea how to even begin, and promptly gave up. Thankfully, I have a friend who thrives on organization, so I called her to see if she might be willing to help.
"I've dreamt of this day," she said. "I'll be over in ten minutes."
I sort of expected she'd have a system to help free my kitchen of clutter and magically make everything better. And she did. Her system was to empty the contents of every cabinet into an ungodly pile on the kitchen floor. We were at it until 1 a.m. And by we, I mean her. My job was essentially to stand there and argue why I didn't want to throw away a set of cheap wine glasses embossed with the logo of a local home improvement company.
"What if I want to impress a girl one day?" I pleaded.
"No girl will be impressed by wine that offers a 20% discount on windows and siding," she explained while tossing them.
So my Friday was spent top-billed in my very own episode of "Hoarders," which was just swell. We ended up with several boxes for Goodwill and my basement. Best of all, I finally found that cutting board.
NOT best of all? I also found, high atop the refrigerator, a half-eaten cherry pie from 2016 -- or at least the plant-like creation that half-eaten cherry pies spawn into after a half-decade atop one's fridge. It was up there next to a solidified honey bear and the owner's manual from the car I sold seven years ago.
Also: I apparently own FOUR jars of garlic powder. Every time I've ever said to myself, "Ooh, I need garlic powder," I most certainly did NOT. I am now ready and armed to fend off an army of vampires, or at least ensure I will never be kissed again. Also: what is "summer savory?" Does it perchance become MORE savory over multiple summers? I'm pretty sure I purchased it in 1992, when I graduated college and decided that adulting meant owning spices, and we all know how crucial summer savory is to most recipes.
With my kitchen back to some semblance of order, my friend (thank you, Dianna!) left somewhere around 2 a.m. and I made it to bed a while later, eager for a full night's sleep.
I settled for three hours. At 6:07 a.m., for no reason whatsoever, my smoke detector went off. Not in a you-need-to-change-the-battery kinda way. This was most definitely a YOUR-HOUSE-IS-ON-FIRE-YOU-BETTER-RUN alarm. So imagine, if you will, stumbling half-naked into your living room in an incoherent haze of confusion and adrenaline, when suddenly a voice over your shoulder says, "Mr. Brown?"
I straight up screamed.
My smoke detector is hooked up to my security system. When something goes off, it alerts someone in a monitoring center in who-knows-where, and suddenly that person was talking to me through my alarm system's speakerphone. "Mr. Brown, do I need to send fire response?"
"Ummmmm," I said, still looking for a fire. "I have no idea. I don't think so. But I don't know. I'm asleep. Kinda. Hang on."
I ran around the house, ready to stop-drop-and-roll at a moment's notice. I even ran outside through the snow to check the perimeter. There was no fire.
"I think we're good," I told the spectral voice haunting my living room.
"I will cancel the alarm," she reponded. "I just need your password."
Seriously? I have umpteen passwords for umpteen devices, and you're expecting me to play memory games on three hours sleep, 43 seconds of consciousness, and a battery-powered nightmare machine on the ceiling trying its best to shatter my eardrums?
I just started yelling potential passwords into the open air, hoping and praying I was picking the right one.
My fifth attempt proved accurate. That's how my weekend kicked off. Me, half-naked in my living room, playing Password with a disembodied voice while my house may or may not have been burning down.
I have no clue why the smoke detector issued a false alarm. The troubleshooting manual says false alarms are most often associated with (a) cooking misadventures, (b) steam from showers, or (c) "less common: bugs in and around your sensor." My cats looked suspicious, but none were wearing chef's hats or shower caps. So hooray, my house wasn't on fire. I just, umm, have bugs? Yay.
I'd like to tell you things got better from there. Sadly, it was just the opening act of the weekend from hell. More next week.
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