I didn’t have a little brother, but I can imagine that it would resemble my impulse right now to scream at my computer, “No, Henry, you fucking perv, I already said it wasn’t about Angela and those two execs from Enron!!”
 
That said, I want to get on with my story, since that’s what you’re supposed to do on your blog and I finally can now. Unlike some people, I dread Internet cafes anyway, so while I was work-from-home surfing between apartments in Brooklyn with my laptop in Dallas–
 
oh wait, I didn’t finish the story yet.
 
So you probably know my Mom by now, and if not, all you need to know for our purposes today is that she’s a pitiless, merciless snot in a kitchen not up to her standards, and I was dreading the daily cheerful new insights into why my kitchen sucks that accompany her every visit.
 
Well a few months ago, Georgina had me over to her kitchen and gave me a no-bullshit chef’s eye view of what’s important in life, along with two valium and a glass of shiraz. I had resolved to switch out my shitty old school faucet for one that has a tall gooseneck for filling pots and could finally attach the Mercola water filter she’d given me for Christmas. (For someone whose put all kind of awful stuff in her mouth, you should hear Georgina go on about the importance of filtered water.)
 
I found the perfect one on Overstock.com, too for cheap, and it was waiting still in its UPS packing in my hall cabinet.
 
Well anyway I’m sure you can see where this is going: full of good intentions early on Sunday morning and planning to reward myself after with coffee and book shopping after a tramp in the snow, I decide to take on the kitchen and after switching the faucet out and reconnecting the water lines snugly, I wrench the hot water valve too hard just trying to turn it back on, the compression valve slips on the copper and there’s hot water fucking everywhere, spraying my legs and burning my hands while I’m trying to crank this valve back down and stuff a towel in it at the same time– what a fucking mess.
 
I admit I’m drinking more shiraz as I write this right now.
 
Well it took me a minute but I remembered seeing the shutoff out in the hallway when someone was remodeling, found a bucket to wedge under the soaking, scalding towel and finally get the fucking water turned off out in the hallway in soaking clothes and bright red hands from the hot water.
 
And them my phone rang.
 
I picked it up to find Chef ranting about Admin and how his website isn’t all it could be and where were all the customers– I mean, its 9 in the morning on the Sunday after Valentine’s Day and I can only think “Chef struck out last night and he’s taking it out on me. Fucking great.”
 
And then I turned around to the angry mob in the hallway, peering in my open front door.
 
I’d shut off the water to the whole floor.