We Scoff at Rain, Darlink
OK so here’s a cool thing that happened to me. The guys who are rehabbing the house next door asked me if I minded if they painted my foundation white to match theirs. Um… nope. Knock yourself out there, bub. Paint away.
Then a few days later they said they were going to have their contractor up on the exterior of the third floor, removing some kind of rotten fascia board and lining it with copper and replacing it and painting it all white. Did I mind if they did my side too? Again I say “Yeah, go for it.”
Then I was making conversation with this peddler of free services and asked what he paid for his new windows, mentioning that I needed new ones in the front because they both leaked. He said “Oh yeah, our new ones leak too, it’s because of that rotten fascia board right there. That’s why we’re fixing it.” And lo and behold he was RIGHT. Not only does his newly-painted board thing look nice and neat, but it’s raining like all-get-out* here and these windows are not leaking! Now, I still need new windows there, but this buys me time and takes them from a priority 2 project down to… say, priority 5. Sweet huh?
Then the guy came back and asked if I minded if he mulched the front of my house, and I again I did not mind, but I then began to feel like his white trash neighbor or something. Especially when I complimented him on their new number sign for the house and he said “Oh, they’re only like, $70 at the Home Depot, and I was thinking ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if she got one too, so we could match?’” And I was thinking “$70 may not seem like much to you, rehab-boy, but in my world we have things to spend our $70 on that aren’t matchy-matchy number plates.” Then I was thinking “This guy totally thinks that I am the white-trash neighbor who’s going to bring the price of his rehab down. Dang.” Like, dude, my house is not that bad. But then my Mom reminded me that it’s the beginning of April, which in St. Louis is still pretty early weather-wise to do a lot of landscaping and also that I am crippled and can’t even get outside in the front without assistance, so what the heck? And I was soothed. Until I noticed he’d mulched OVER one of my azaleas and all of my ground cover and now I have to go dig those out so that they don’t choke to death. Hrmph.
*does that colloquialism even begin to translate to non-Midwest America or the rest of the world?
Filed under: garden stuff, housing drama |6 Responses to “We Scoff at Rain, Darlink”
Leave a Reply
Doesn’t really translate well here in Australia. But I get the general image of “get out now or get flooded out later”. Is this right?
I would say “pissing down in sheets”, but that is just me :P
And “pissing down in sheets” is rather evocative. Still more rain to come here.
Lawdy! It’s the end times!
Say, like a housefire…
Q: How bad is it?
A: All get out!
Or a flood threatening a town…
Q: How high will the water rise?
A: All get out!
And now it’s morphed into an entirely different pronunciation too.
Where one would say “They were smudging up my clean floor, so I made them all get out.”, the phrase mentioned above is pronounced with the emphasis on “get” and as if “get-out” was one word. “They were being messy as all get-out, so I made them leave!”
Huh, and looking it up one dictionary noted that it was an English/Australian expression!
I understood the “all get-out” thing, but my parents grew up in the Midwest. I also understand when “they have that over to the grocery store.” Even though in New Englandish, we have things “at” the grocery store.
My mom never said it like that, but my dad still does. :-/ Weird little phrase, that.