My baby's growing up

Zack peed in the backyard this morning! OMG he peed in the backyard! we didn't even have to go back there with him, he just trotted on back there and went for it! He's becoming a man-dog (as much as a fixed dog can, anyway). I'm so proud.

laundry chute

i'd just like to point out that having a laundry chute is going to save me thousands, if not millions, of dollars in uneaten Smart Wool socks. too bad for zack. good times for my feet.

Unpacking is haaarrrrd

So, we've been unpacking a lot. And you know what? It kind of sucks! It's really hard!

You know what's not hard? Losing perspective. Seriously. So we have to unpack and get rid of a lot of stuff. So be it. But professional people packed and moved us? For free? We're really lucky.

Also, Zack update: he won't even pee in the backyard now. And he sticks to us like glue. Man. I think he's really freaked out by the change. He follows me everywhere. He even sits in the bathroom with me when I shower in the morning! Poor little man.

Kermit the Asshole

So on the day we taped the part of the teevee show where we're shown the pile of stuff that "goes in storage for a year" (read: goes in our basement), Aa spent some time talking about his Kermit the Frog doll and how much he liked it. And, well, look at the color of our living room. Roger the Ruddy painted it Kermit green. Huh.

Also, there's been some concern that Aa and I are going to look like big old jerks on this show once it airs. Which, uh, we may. As my sister told me the night of the reveal when I called her to tell her how upset we were, "Just so you know, nobody likes the people who hate the house on those shows". Which was really blunt but probably true (she's gifted like that).

Sleeping in the place we pay for

The last couple of nights we've slept in the Minty (we couldn't sleep there till Saturday night b/c the paint fumes were so bad). Zack's taken an inaugural pee in the backyard. (I applauded. It's a long story that I can bore you with sometime over some beers, but suffice it to say that our dog is kind of a little fussbudget and doesn't like peeing just anywhere.) This morning I used our cutey little Italian espresso maker. The colors are sort of growing on us. The bordello mirror is down and the Zackskin rug is out of the bedroom. We've unpacked the bathroom and kitchen. We do laundry all the time. And for two nights in a row now, we've stood in the middle of the floor and jumped up and down with our shoes on -- because we have no downstairs neighbor to worry about.

and now for the pics........

this is what it looks like now...
(with pictures of zack!!!)
-- AA

My Superbowl Shuffle will set you free

Here's the greatest part of the whole reality teevee experience. The host of Move This House is really good friends with Willie Gault, formerly of the Chicago Bears, and quite possibly my favorite football player of all time. He took ballet! By his own admission, he practices all day and dances all night! He was the most graceful runner EVER! So she called him and let me talk to him. HOLY SHIT! I called him "Mr. Gault" and got choked up but refrained from telling him I named my Chicago Bears teddy bear after him when I was little. Yeah.

So, I have now been rendered stupid by three celeb interactions in my life.

1. Salman Rushdie
2. Jeff Tweedy
3. Speedy Fucking Willie

Zackskin rug

Pictures will be posted by tomorrow. Promise! For now though, let me say that once I saw the house, I realized why I felt dread. And then I was like, oh duh, of course. They don't design for people. They design for television! This explains the garish, inspired-by-highlighter colors and almost funny-huge chandelier dangling in our wee dining room. (So small they crammed our big stupid dining room table in there BUT DIDN'T HAVE ROOM FOR CHAIRS.)

Particularly gruesome -- the cowhide rug looked almost exactly like they skinned a large version of my dog and laid it on the bedroom floor. Hey!

(update: Roger the Ruddy apologized for the rug. That was nice.)

Best quote:

Roger the Ruddy: "I wanted to make it rock, since you're in a rock band"
Aa: "I'm not in this kind of rock band."

horribly wrong

those are the only two words to describe what has happened to our nice cute little house.

we didn't even get to sleep in our house for the 1st night because of the fumes from the oil based paint. OIL BASED PAINT! crazy.

cow skinned rug?

mirror'd wall?

green living room?

copper ceiling?

silver ceiling?

who the fuck paints the ceiling metallic colors? not me. NOT ME.

where do I start? oh yeah. I already did.

what was going to be fun has become very very dumb.

over and out and very upset.

AA

Next stop, The Surreal Life

So today is "the big reveal". Aa and I go to the Minty and check out what the designer dude has done. Last night Aa said he woke up in a cold sweat, fearful that the teevee people painted the ceilings (which we DO NOT want). I have used the word "weird" to describe this whole television thing so many times. But I don't know how else to describe it! It's really fucking weird.

I'll write more about how strange Tuesday was later. That's when we were first taped and had to interact with the tiny, beautiful, heavily be-makeupped host and the designer, who I've been calling Roger the Ruddy. But here's the main takeaway: I thought this whole thing was about us, and I was relieved of that misconception during the taping on Tuesday. This is so totally not about us. This is about Roger the Ruddy and Tanya the Be-makeupped. Aa and I are essentially talking props that Roger and Tanya react to. We just go where we're told and then say some things and make some faces. It doesn't matter too much what we do or what faces we make, either.

Tonight we sleep for the first time in this house we bought. I do wonder if it'll feel like we're guests in someone else's place though. I bet it will.

SUPERSTAR!

Yesterday, the television people called me and said they didn't need to film me. But they did need me to unpack some of the books and paintings and decorative-thingies I'd already packed and put them out, to create the illusion that we hadn't been packing and that we lived there all normal and non-packing-like. So I did, and cleaned a lot, and then got the hell out of there for a few hours. But I did get to briefly meet the extraordinarily brawny and ruddy Roger Hazard, who is designing our house. Zack the dog met him too, and did exactly what he does with everyone he meets: he sniffed Roger's knees and then stared up at him for a while. Tomorrow they film me, and I've been told they're going to try and gin up some conflict b/t me and Roger. I know how to fake-cry, so I intend to use that skill if necessary.

Today's a strange day. I feel a little like a kid before Christmas, but I also feel some dread and kind of groundless. For the next four days, I'm staying at a friend's. Last night was my last night in that wonderful, dumpy apartment we loved so much. Aa spent his last night there before leaving for tour without even really realizing it. And since the television is packing and moving us, I have no sense of closure or anything at our apartment. It's a weird sort of limbo I'm in today.

DEFCON hot for teacher

There's gonna be footage of Aa on the road in this. Just found out today. KICK. ASS.

You know what I actually forgot about in all this other madness (aside from teevee stuff, I work at a public radio station and we're in pledge drive which means crazier than ever work hours)? We bought a house. We have, like, a mortgage and stuff now. Weird.

Also weird (and totally off-topic for this blog): this article about an acting teacher at the college I went to. I never had him for an acting class, but of course I knew him. And Aa had him and really liked / respected him. What's weird is not necessarily the actions of the professor, but the reaction. Of course he made out with some college boys. Teachers and students messed around in the theater program I was in. I suspect this is not unique to my college experience either. I thought it was just part of the curriculum - read too much Sam Shepard, read FAR too much David Mamet, surround yourself with other deluded kids and make VERY IMPORTANT ART together, drink as much as your little body can take, do as many drugs as you can get your hands on, and get a little inappropriate with a professor at a party or a bar (or after class or...whenever). All of these stupid actions, all of this drama, all of these hangovers, were supposed to be the "real world experience" that allowed us to become adults and, uh, prepare us to go out in the actual world.

So, college man-boy who got one planted on him, think about this whole experience as an opportunity. You can grow and learn about yourself and become stronger from this whole sad episode. And someday when you work at State Farm, you'll have an awesome story to tell your buddies over smothered chicken and beers at Bennigan's.

DEFCON uh...

Just talked to Aa, who's on the road w/ the band. He asked me to wear his band t-shirt during filming because that's what the girlfriend of the lead singer of The Shins did when she was a finalist on America's Next Top Model. Then Chutes Too Narrow came out. Then The Shins became America's Most-Loved Band.

It's worth pointing out that since I am *not* a finalist on America's Next Top Model, nobody is going to be staring at my boobs to figure out what the shirt covering them says. It's also worth pointing out that I don't think a home-improvement reality show on the poor man's Bravo gets the audience that America's Next Top Model does. Nonetheless, I will wear the shirt because I love Aa and he asked me to. And it's a cute shirt. And average-looking girls should try to use teevee to promote their boyfriends' bands too. Maybe I will make a little one for Zack the dog and he can wear one too.



IN OTHER NEWS: met w/ the moving guy yesterday. He seems really nice and responsible. And his company packs and moves everything. Everything! Even all the crap in our basement that we haven't looked at in three years. Hehe.

Filming starts Sunday. That's two days from today for those of you not keeping track.

I'm kind of ready to be in the house now. I'm tired of waiting for the next stage.

I'm also tired of people asking me to take care of one more thing.

I'm also tired of sarcasm.

DEFCON spaz

So yesterday I watched an episode of the teevee show Aa and I are going to be on. And I had a complete...panic...attack. Seriously. I was totally freaked out. The episode, see, featured this lady who had a lot of stuff. And the big bear designer guy called her out for having a bunch of junk. He basically accused her of neglecting her daughter and her homelife in order to collect all the crap she had. This bothered me. The show has to have some conflict in it, and the conflict will easily come from the part in the show where bear designer tells the people what of their stuff is being banished to storage.

I don't want to be called out on teevee for having a lot of stuff. And also it bothers me that I will be expected to defend Aa's stuff, since he'll still be gone. I probably overreacted a little -- I yelled at my friend R who was over, and then called my parents and yelled at them for a while -- but I'm now nervous in a way I wasn't before. And I'm a tad bit obsessed with trying to figure out a way to game this and control the outcome to get what I want. It's amazing - 48 hours ago I was crowing about not having to pack or move our stuff. Now I want more. I want them to re-landscape the backyard and get us a snazzy new couch and build us a loft! And I want to not look like a total idiot on this show. And I want ten million dollars. And some diamonds. And a pony.

"And watch, here's the part where the dog stares at the host for a full minute!"

So it would seem that we're now definitively, irrevocably Americans. We're going to be on a reality television show. In this show, all our stuff will be packed. And moved from the apartment to the Minty. And a designer dude will, uh, design some rooms in the new house. And also go through our stuff and tell us what we can keep and put the rest in storage. This knowledge, that we're going to be on television (well, cable) has been rattling around in my head since I found out yesterday. And although I am still somewhat skeptical of the whole thing (I know teevee lies; please see Gene Hackman entry, below), I really only have one thing to say about this whole weird turn of events. And that one thing is, holy shit.