theology&geometry

I took a little solo walk today in Chickasaw Gardens near the little park and lake, where I go to entertain my greenest fantasies — the ones where I imagine what life would be like were I to be the kind of person who drove a Lexus into a two-car garage bordered by meticulously landscaped greenery tended by hired help.

They’re silly fantasies, little one, because we all know that even if I could afford a Lexus and a two-car garage, I would still drive a dented Nissan and park in the driveway because the garage would be full of crafting supplies and boxes of jeans I am delusional enough to believe I will be able to wear again someday.

I’m getting off topic here. The point is, the trees were showing out something big. And I figure you’ll miss the bulk of the pretty colors this year, but I want you to know that I am out here drinking them in for you, and looking forward to the days in a few years when you will jump into and completely destroy the pile of leaves I’ve worked so hard to rake up. Because you are going to be SO GROUNDED.

After I left a note complaining about the barking, I got a voicemail from my neighbor. She apologized profusely for the barking and said she was just horrified to know they’d been keeping us up. She said that she’d had some painters in the house while she was out of town and they’d apparently left the dogs outside or something. She said please don’t hesitate to let her know if they were bothering us, and left two phone numbers to use.

Super awesome. I really wasn’t expecting her to be so cool about it; I always assume people will be the biggest jerks possible when confronted. I tried calling her back but it just rang and rang. So today I dropped off a thank-you card telling her how much we appreciated her understanding, and that we’d be happy to check in on the dogs if she ever needed us to while she was away.

Happy ending, yay!

I hate to break down and have a “back in my day” rant over something so trivial, but I am pissed.

Adults are ruining Halloween. Don’t even get me started on the idiotic “sexy X” costumes that have pretty much taken over the pre-fab options for women. Of course, I’m annoyed that every costume is pre-fab anyway. What ever happened to making your own damn costume? Or doing something you can’t just buy in a bag? Grumble.

No, I will not get started on that.

What I WILL get started on is this apparently new idea (it happened last year at my house too) that you can be a grown-ass person and just traipse around a neighborhood in your regular clothes and shove a Walgreens sack in people’s doorways and they will give you candy. Old-ass adults do it. Closer-to-20-than-13 teenagers do it. Some adults at least have the decency to drag their kids around and the kids ask for candy first and THEN the adults hold their bags out. Shit, I had a group of teenage girls just open their purses at me and chant, “See ya next year!” as they sauntered away. They didn’t even bother with the plastic bag. And one group of teen boys came up and before I could give them anything, shoved their giant boy hands into the bowl and started shoving fistful after fistful of candy into their plastic bags. I had to actually tell them to slow down and take it easy, that they were wiping me out. I closed the door and heard someone raising hell and moaning that he didn’t get anything. This kid had to be 15 or 16. He was mad. I opened the door back up and gave him some Smarties (not the Kit Kats) and he didn’t say thanks or fuck you or anything.

It sucks. You want some candy? Fucking go to Kroger and buy your own bag, just like I did. The people who come to my door to take candy from me are not dirt poor folks, hoping for a sugar fix just to survive. Many of them had children wearing sneakers worth more than my own shitty slip-ons. I kind of hesitate to even write about this because I know I am going to sound like an entitled prick for even bringing it up, but it bugs me. Like Ray told me, he grew up dirt poor but his mom knew that on Halloween, if you couldn’t afford anything else, you at least threw a ratty sheet over your head and called yourself a ghost. The point is the silly make-believe, not the fucking candy. I had wondered last year why hardly anyone else on my street turned on their porch lights on Halloween, and why I was the only one with a jack-o-lantern on the stoop. Now I know it’s because the hassle of dealing with grown-ass jerks far outweighs the half dozen or so actual costumed kids who are having fun being silly and going around the neighborhood in costume.

QUICK VENT!

This is what they do at 6:30 or 7 a.m. every morning … for hours and hours:

neighbor dogs who won’t let us sleep from Lindsey Turner on Vimeo.

And then again a few hours later. Or whenever they’re bored. Which is a lot since they are just hanging out in the courtyard, which is mere feet from our bedroom window, all day and night, seemingly every day and night for the past week or so.

The other night they were at it at midnight and then again at 2:30 or 3 in the morning. Then again at 7. I marched my sleepy-eyed preggo self over there and rang the doorbell twice, then walked around to the back to see if the neighbor’s car was there. It wasn’t. I haven’t seen it there for days. Is she out of town? Did she leave her dogs out in the yard while she’s out of town? Is something wrong? Lesley suggested she might be dead in there, which honestly never crossed my mind (and usually I love to imagine the gruesomest scenario) but could be true. We haven’t called the cops yet because I’m trying to be diplomatic and talk to her about this before trying to get others to intervene, but I can never catch her home. So what’s my recourse? A note on the door? Don’t worry, it won’t be anonymous. I just found her phone number online. Am I going to have to call her? God, I need a shot of whiskey first.

I work nights so 7 a.m. is like my 3 a.m. It’s an unreasonable time to fuck with me. But, you know, it would be an unreasonable time to fuck with someone with a day job too.

It’s already tough to sleep through the night but around 7 a.m. is when I am actually getting a couple or three hours of consecutive, pee-free sleep. Having bored dogs howling at rustling leaves and passing joggers jolts me out of the one REM cycle I get every night and makes it incredibly difficult to function for the rest of the day. I can deal with it occasionally — dogs are dogs and they bark, I get it — but it has been every day, all day, for many days and I am feeling myself start to crack from the exhaustion.

Okay, yes. I am going to have to call her. And I will make sure to scream at the top of my lungs outside her windows when I am giving birth.

Dear baby boy,

Today your dad and I woke up early and went Downtown to the Rock-n-Soul Museum, where we used a Smithsonian Museum Day coupon to get in for free. That’s a savings of $22, little man. We are so clever, aren’t we? You thumped around inside me while we watched the museum’s intro video, which pulsed the sounds of Carl Perkins and Elvis and Otis Redding into the air.

The museum attendant handed us our tour headphone sets and I placed the little speakers over my belly and turned up the volume so you could hear Robert Johnson crooning* and Otis Redding wailing and Sam and Dave defining Soul Men. You didn’t seem to have much of a reaction so I guess I caught you while you were sleeping, or maybe you were so impressed with what you heard that the sounds stopped you short and you just sat there, still, letting the music soak in. Your dad put his hand on my belly and thumped along to the rhythm. Did you hear?

We walked around Downtown trying to decide where to eat but my heart was set on the Majestic Grille, since it had been so long since I’d been there. Your dad was relieved that the hostess sat us near the bar so he could watch football while we ate our spinach dip and flatbreads. He had the duck and I had the chicken. Protein, little man. That’s where it’s at. Your dad took extra paper towels from the restroom because he thought they were so fancy. “They’re like napkins!”

It was a nice day. I wore a cardigan even though it was a probably a little too warm for it, just because it’s cute and lets my belly poke out. It’s fall now and it’s the little things that sustain me, see. We came home and I took a nap before work because I have learned that from here on out, I need to sleep whenever I can because this ol’ body of mine is working really hard to get you in good shape for your big debut.

I am ready for you to join us on our little adventures, kiddo.

* about beating his woman until he gets satisfied. Which, of course, you need to understand is very wrong and not at all a joking matter and … I will explain this to you when you get older.

My first mistake was assuming that I would make it to bed by midnight Friday.

Instead, I was up until 3, printing out last-minute signs and trying to make sure I had everything in order. My alarm coaxed me awake at 6 and I went about loading the car and putting some food and drinks in the cooler, only to realize that most of the ice trays were empty and therefore completely worthless to me. Bah. I filled a big travel mug with strong coffee and woke Ray up right before time to go, and we scooted over to Cooper-Young.

We found our stall and pulled the car into the nearest parking lot to unload as we waited for Shane — the bringer of the tables and chairs and the essential extra person to help successfully put up the tent. He ran into some traffic snags so we roped my pal Ed, who had just stopped by to chat, into helping us attempt to get the tent set up, since I was starting to panic a little about getting everything ready and the car moved before the streets were blocked off and Ray was effectively stuck there all day (he needed to be able to go home and sleep before his work shift that night) and the festival gates opened.

We got the tent mostly open and figured out, and then Shane arrived and applied his tent TLC to get it fully functional. We made pretty quick work of attaching the lattice and hanging the photos up on their janky little paperclips. I kept running into a brain block where I couldn’t quite figure out exactly how I wanted things to look, even though I had practiced the day before. Anyway, we were tidying up as the festival-goers started trickling in, but by and large, we got it done in time. I am so glad I have helpful friends, and that Shane has a good eye so that he could figure out the best place to put some things I was totally stymied by.

By 9:30 I was already sweaty and exhausted, but things were just getting started.

I made some sales early on, which was encouraging. I immediately met a sweet couple of ladies who really liked my Tennessee prints and were hoping to customize them as cards. The magnets of the same size were a big hit, too, and I sold out of one design and nearly out of the other. Another big seller was the Memphis letter collage print, which eventually sold out.

Several friends stopped by and chatted with me, which was a lovely cure for my hermit disease. Some friends even bought stuff, which was also awesome.

One of the coolest things that happened was getting to meet people who read the blog/follow the shop whom I’ve never met before. They were all so sweet and patient with me. Hi, everyone I met who might be reading this now!

Erica checked on me several times and, being a craft show veteran, even offered some suggestions about how to tweak the booth. I heeded her advice on moving the banner so that people could see in to the booth, but I didn’t have the energy to change the placement of the tables. Next time, maybe. Ray and Shane dropped back by to check on me, as did Amanda and Brandon, so I could walk around and take a pee break or two. I ate a giant burger from Celtic Crossing — that they delivered to my booth! — and swilled water to stave off dehydration.

It wasn’t so bad sitting there alone. I got to do some pretty fine people watching (some highlights: seeing a woman on a Rascal scooter accidentally careen into a neighboring booth and knock over a piece of art, and then later seeing a woman and a man have words — “ex-ca-uuuuuuse YOU!” when they both accidentally bumped into each other, and then even later watching some kid get caught trying to steal some dude’s sombrero) and it gave me a chance to sit back and tend to things in the booth that I might have ignored had I been otherwise distracted.

One of the bars across the front of the tent started to fall, and every third person who came inside hit his/her head on it on the way back out. I started warning everyone repeatedly to watch their heads, as many of them had had some beer and were not exactly observant. Ha. But I was scared that if I tried to push the bar back up, that my entire tent would collapse. So I left it.

It was really cool having people come by and have nice things to say about my art. I feel weird calling it that but that’s what it is. One man even told me I had the best collection out of all the photographers there. Sadly he didn’t buy anything but hey, a compliment is great too.

I can say I’d definitely do another craft fair, now that I sort of know how they work and what to expect, and the kinds of things craft show buyers seem to gravitate toward. It was an excellent marketing opportunity and I gave my cards out to everyone who would take one or two so they will hopefully check out my shop. Of course, this time next year I will have my hands full with a 10-month-old (!!!) but I would love to try my hand at it again. Maybe get a bigger tent and some sturdier structures from which to hang things. Maybe pare down my offerings a bit now that I know what didn’t garner much interest at all and what seemed to be popular. Definitely make extra copies of things that I can tell will be popular so that I don’t run out, although it’s really hard to predict what will take off and what won’t.

By the time we got home, I was completely exhausted and could hardly move. My hips and back were almost totally locked up and my head had started to hurt pretty bad. I was in bed by 10 p.m. and slept nearly 12 hours. I woke up sore and still tired. But it was a good tired. An accomplished tired. It was quite a leap to take to get my name out there and let people peruse through my artwork, opening myself up to judgment like that. I would so love it one day if this is how I could make a real living. Making and sharing and selling.

Saturday morning at 6, I will rise out of bed like a very large, potentially grumpy phoenix and make my way to Cooper-Young to set up my booth for Cooper-Young Festival. I’ll be in C7, which is over by Cafe Ole on Cooper.

I’ll be selling the same sorts of things that are available in my Etsy shop: photo prints (framed and unframed), quirky art prints, crafty things, note cards, recipe cards, posters, magnets, and opportunities to sign up for custom work. I’ve never sold any of my stuff in person before, nor have I ever manned a craft-fair booth, so this should be all sorts of learning experiences rolled into one. I honestly have no idea what to expect, so I am going to keep the bar nice and low and not expect too much. Just some networking and socializing and people-watching, and hoping people like my stuff at least enough to stop by and take a card. I keep reading online that people don’t buy photos at craft fairs. Uh, or at all, really. But I figure I have to put myself out there and at least try. Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that.

Later this week once I get everything organized, I’ll post a preview of what will be for sale. There will be several things not available in the Etsy shop.

So if you’ll be at C-Y Fest, come say hello!

I have the strangest feeling that this flyer is missing crucial information. Date, time, general location, check. Warning for early birds, check. General idea of what’ll be for sale, check. Hm.

Working nights sucks on its own, but then you have to contend with the fact that society gives no shit that 8 a.m. is your 4 a.m.

rude awakening from Lindsey Turner on Vimeo.

Yes, I am 80 and don’t know the difference between rap and hip-hop. Shut up.

Anger and cursing ahead. You’ve been warned.

In order to turn the back bedroom into the office/spare room so that the current office can become the nursery, we needed some basic electrical work done. I’m talking one dead outlet repaired, one outlet with broken plate/face repaired, and an additional outlet installed (so I could easily plug in all my computer stuff in a room with too few existing outlets). No big whoop, except neither Ray nor I are comfortable attempting any level of electrical work (despite others assuring me how easy the outlet replacements would be). I called a local electrician near my house and described what I needed, then was told they’d charge $98 per hour for labor but they’d need to come out and see exactly what work needed to be done. And then I remembered that not too long ago, I had come across a business card advertising a wide variety of handyman-type services. I found the card, called the number, and chatted with Mr. Cannon Can Do himself — Curtis Cannon. He seemed overly verbose but lots of us Southerners can be too friendly sometimes. I asked him if he was certified and he assured me yes, he was. I doodled “certified” on the business card so the preggo brain hole would not gobble up this information. He said he’d need to come out and look at the problem to give me an estimate. Thinking the repairs would be so minor and so simple for a professional to do, I figured it would be cool to use an independent contractor who might cut me a deal, and this guy seemed like he’d do a decent job.

So Mr. Curtis Cannon made his way into my house one weekday afternoon, several hours after he told me he’d arrive because he said he got held up at another job while waiting on an inspector, and surveyed what I needed done. He seemed to think the repairs would be simple enough and quoted me a price I could live with.

Cut to late yesterday morning, when Mr. Cannon rolls up into my house, chatty as can possibly be, and starts taking apart the outlet whose plastic face/plate is broken. He does not cut the power to the outlet — he says he’s been doing this stuff long enough not to get zinged … huh — until I urge him to do so, and take him to see the breaker box. It is at that point that the day goes from normal hectic to batshit crazypants insane. The Babytime people show up with the crib and very kindly assemble it for me in the spare bedroom since Mr. Cannon and his things are splayed out in the nursery so he can repair the outlet. The cats are terrified, hiding and peering out from under things. There is so much going on that Ray leaves to go to Borders so he can study for the bar, which is in two days.

Somehow, the Babytime guys get done assembling the crib and the changing table before Mr. Curtis has finished the first outlet replacement. That in and of itself is amazing to me. By this time, it has been four hours and Mr. Cannon has apparently just discovered why the one outlet in the back bedroom is dead: Broken breaker. The switch won’t stick up or down. So he hauls ass to Home Depot to get a replacement and then comes back and hammers it into the box. Loudly.

I am sitting inside on the couch, hearing him whoop and yelp and say “ow” at regular intervals. I think he is being shocked repeatedly. I wonder if I should watch out the window just to make sure that he is not lying dead on my back porch. He comes back inside and tells me not to worry should I hear him making noise. That’s just how he is. Hyuk.

By this point, he has told me what feels like his entire life story. All about his 21 grandkids, his wife, his daughter who is always pregnant, his 84-year-old father who just got remarried to an 86-year-old, his elderly father’s Toyota, his son-in-law’s attempts to become an accountant … so on. I engage as much as I can as politely as I can because I was just raised that way. I was admittedly more jovial in the beginning, as I thought it was just friendly smalltalk to pass the time. Later on, when I realized this motherfucker was never going to get the work done and leave, my mood shifted to downright pissy. Also by this point, he has also answered his phone roughly a dozen times, all while protesting greatly and vocally, as though he was just terribly bothered by a ringing phone because he had soooo much to do. And then “Hello?…”

More hours tick by. He tells me he’s done with the back bedroom’s outlets and I come around the corner and see this.

The original outlet (which was dead until he changed out the breaker) is on the left — the white one. It appears that he removed the plate for some reason because I don’t recall the outlet looking that skanky before. He then installed a beige one beside it and took a chunk out of my drywall and left giant pencil marks in the process. Look at this shit from the side:

You can stick your finger behind that plate. A child would certainly be able to get several fingers behind that plate.

I ask Mr. Curtis Cannon what we are going to do about that gouge in the wall — his drill bit slipped or something, he says — and he sheepishly says something about if I wanted him to put some mud in it he could paint over it … except he didn’t have those materials with him and we’d have to go to the hardware store and get the paint color matched and so on. He keeps saying, “I want my customers to be completely satisfied!” as if just saying so would make his shit work instantly better.

I ask Mr. Cannon why he decided to install a beige outlet even though the outlet right beside it is bright white … as is the other outlet in the room … and he says that when he originally came to see what work needed to be done, he took notes that all the outlets were beige, so that’s what he bought. At no point did he stop to consider asking me if I would be OK with mismatched outlets, apparently.

By that point, I am starting to mentally black out, like I can’t possibly stand there and argue with this man about what a shit job I am looking at and how he is going to fix it, considering he already fucked it up royally. It just doesn’t seem possible that this is even happening in real time and that it is not done happening, that it is unfolding like some giant origami piece of suck. I am tweeting furiously between conversations with him because I want to get it all down, at least. Ray isn’t home to do any manly posturing so I text him and tell him that dude has fucked up the wall. When he comes home, Mr. Cannon is still going back and forth from the first broken outlet to the fuse box, unable to figure out why the outlet has suddenly lost juice but the others now have it. He makes several phone calls to contemporaries to get ideas. He takes every plate cover off and tests the wires to no avail. Ray settles back down to try to study and the sky opens up and I wonder aloud if it’s a problem that the breaker box, which is outside, is uncovered and getting rained in. Seems like it would be a problem, right? I’m no rocket doctor but to me, water and electric wires should probably remain estranged. Ray asks Mr. Curtis Cannon if the breaker box getting rained in is an issue, and Mr. Curtis Fucking Cannon replies in his sing-song, drawled-out way, that no — it’s no problem unless he’s trying to touch those wires and is standing in water. Otherwise, it’s just hardware and water. Nothing to get worked up about. Ray doesn’t buy it, I don’t buy it, but neither of us is going to go out there and replace the metal cover on the box because … fuck that.

At this point, we’re in hour seven or so. I am exhausted and at the end of my mental and physical rope. On my giant to-do list for Monday was go to the grocery. I am going on many hours without food and I’m starting to feel like absolute shit. I go into the bedroom to sort of lie comatose for a while and try to wake up from this obvious bad dream. Mr. Curtis Cannon has called in reinforcements, I know, because I can hear a new man’s voice in the house. Suddenly I hear my burglar alarm chirping. I wait to see if anyone figures out how to turn it off but finally come out and enter the code and notice that the house is dark. They have cut the entire power supply and are talking about replacing yet another breaker. It is about 7 p.m. I demand that they explain to me exactly what in the everloving fuck they are talking about now, and the new dude takes me outside to show me that this other breaker is suddenly only powered on one side, meaning that a bunch of my outlets are now not working. Both men start talking about how it looks like the wiring was rigged up and blah blah blah I probably have surges all the time blah blah blah and I halted them right the fuck there. I have lived in this house for two years and I have NEVER had surges or problems with the wiring, save the one dead outlet that resulted from a crappy breaker. Mr. Curtis Cannon immediately chimes in with a “don’t blame me! This house is old! This wiring is bad!” chorus, which is doing nothing but enraging me. So I yell at these fucking idiots that this has been going on for nearly eight hours: WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY GOING TO DO TO GET MY POWER BACK ON?

Mr. Curtis Cannon takes off yet again to Home Depot to search for another breaker, this one bigger than the last. I don’t know the voltage but it’s one of the wide ones. Turns out the metal bit on the back had rusted out and lost its connection. He returns 45 minutes later — while I am sitting there in the dark — with yet another helpmate, and they explain to me that the problem is the shitty breaker box. “Water is getting in there,” the one dude says.

OH FUCKING REALLY? LIKE, SAY, WHEN SOME DUMB ASS LEAVES THE BOX UNCOVERED WHILE IT’S POURING RAIN?

Granted, I know it didn’t rust and fuck up in one day, but I have no doubt that exposure to extreme rain as well as the exposure to extreme fuckery probably pushed it over the edge. And if something in my house fucks up suddenly and you go out of your way to declare that it wasn’t your fault, you swear, please believe me, Ms. Lindsey, then guess fucking what. IT IS PROBABLY YOUR FAULT, YOU MORON.

So Mr. Cannon and his companion were unable to find the breaker they needed at Home Depot, so they end up rerouting some power to my indoor fuse box … or something. I have no idea how safe that is but they seemed to think it would work temporarily until they could come back and rectify the situation. It was either that or have no power for the night. With the circuit back up, Mr. Cannon went back to finishing the final outlet. Mind you, all he had to do was replace the face and plate. I come back to see it and I find this.

Why yes, that IS a chunk of plaster missing! And a broken plate! I asked him what was up with the plate and he said he thought I just wanted the broken face replaced. Um. No. Fuck. NO. WHAT. THE. SERIOUSLY? And I asked what we were going to do about the plaster — through which any number of tiny child fingers could fit AND THIS OUTLET IS IN THE GODDAMNED NURSERY — and he said he could patch it or better yet, he could just buy a jumbo plate to cover it up! Because you can’t look at that outlet and the one on the other wall and see them both at the same time! So no one would ever notice the difference!

No, he really said that.

I suspected a hidden camera crew to pop out at that moment, but no one ever did. I told Mr. Cannon that I wanted the plaster fixed. But mostly I wanted him the fuck out of my house so I gave him money so he would just leave. We set up an appointment to come back next week to repair all the stuff he messed up. Obviously, he will not be setting foot in this house. I made the appointment with him as a means to get him the hell away from me. You do not know how difficult dealing with this man was. It honestly felt like a fucking Boiling Point episode.

Obviously, I am a chump for bringing this man into my house. I thought I could get a handyman to do some minor work and save me some money. This has worked well for me when it comes to my central air unit. I guess I thought that someone could be a handyman type but be certified in electrical work. Maybe that isn’t even a thing, I don’t know. I thought it was serendipitous when I came across this man’s business card on my car at around the time I was needing some work done, but it was not serendipity. There is no such thing as serendipity. The Universe is not looking out for you. The Universe is nothing but chaos and pain and joy is merely the absence of chaos and pain.

I was feeling stupid enough until I Googled this motherfucker and found out that he is a registered violent sex offender. He has other things on his criminal record but that’s the one that jumps out at me. He was in my house for eight hours, he brought two other random dudes into my house, he knows my schedule. Etc. It makes me feel sick.

I called the Shelby County chief electrical inspector today to see if I had any recourse. Here’s a shocker (hurf no pun intended durf): Curtis Cannon neither pulled a permit to work on my house nor is certified to do electrical work. So he lied to me when I asked him point blank about his qualifications. Surely there is some way to bust this guy for impersonating an actual electrician. He had already cashed the check I gave him when I went to stop payment on it today. The best I can do is get his information to the county office and they can try to pursue it through the courts and maybe get him fined. He’ll never pay up, I know that, and I’ve already had to eat the money I spent on his dumb ass. But I want him to be hunted and hassled by the county at the very least.

Obviously I look like a total moron for having anything to do with this guy but I think plenty of other people find themselves in the same position sometimes: You need something done and you don’t have the money to go all out and get the absolute best service. You need something workable and affordable, and often that means working with laymen, albeit ones who should at least be qualified. You try to suss out if someone is going to be OK and you take that gamble. In this case, it only became really clear that he was a moron when he had already hacked into my walls. I got hosed by this guy. Please, if you are in Memphis, do not let him anywhere near your house.

I’m closing comments because I do not want to be berated for being an idiot. I already have taken a pretty good beating for that from myself and I am having a rather low few days so let’s just let this be, yes?