Oh, poop.

Today, I came home and was in high(er) spirits. I had left work before 7... and I was going to go food shopping and maybe buy some KavaKava to lull me into some form of relaxation because I've been as brittle as frozen Silly Putty lately...

So... I gets home and it's a nice evening, so I thinks to myself, I thinks, "Self, why don't you throw open those Jalousie windows of yours and crank the others open and get some air flowing!?"

(Cue ominous music...)

So, being the risktaker that I am, and knowing full well the potential for complete disaster from my task, I crank open the jalousies in my kitchen...

There's a ping. And a crunch. And the sound of weathered aluminium, on weathered aluminium... And yet I crank...

And then, the almost televisionally perfect sound of shattering glass pierces the air.

And then, the almost televisionally perfect sound of my yelling, "Hooo, SHIT," echoes through the West end of Lincoln Road.

That's right.

I couldn't leave well enough alone.

My neighbor, startled pokes her head out to see what's wrong. Gracias a dios, hoy hable en Espanol, entonces pude explicarla que se me rompio un vidrio... (Thank goodness today I spoke a lot in Spanish, so I wasn't all rusty and I could explain to her that I busted a jalousie...)

She was grateful that nothing worse had happened. She came down to survey the damage. I lamented (in Spanish) that now I had TWO broken windows. She told me that "Next year, they're going to replace the windows." I thought that was going to happen THIS year, because I'm sick to death of this bullshit. I may as well have burlap covering three of the front entrances of my house...thank goodness I have an alarm... But energy inefficiency?! Fucking CHRIST. It's like living with tarps covering my kitchen and bathroom windows!

She tells me she has a spare jalousie - that her jalousie in her kitchen door broke and they're not going to replace it. She points down at the missing slat in her kitchen window I have noticed since moving in to the building. I ask her if she needs it, she tells me no, they've discontinued making the bracket that serves the Jalousie, and she can't put it back in.

All the while her adorable three year old is asking me if I broke the window and if I'm going to fix it. I tell the adorable three-year-old who is televisionally perfectly smudged with Hershey's chocolate syrup that yes, I'm going to fix it and ask her if she wants to help me...

My neighbor, Karen, goes into her house and produces a jalousie, which, we discover is too long...

(Cue sad WHOMP! WHOMP! trombone...)

But...wait...

(Cue trumpet music...)

And yet... And yet...

They find...

(They find...)

They find....

(They Find...)

Their task is not a grind!

What catwoman has glass cutting tools in his house!?

THIS CATWOMAN!

(There's a reason Stephen dumped my ass and I ended up taking Stained Glass classes! To have a glass scorer and cutter in my house!)

So, I gets out my safety goggles, and my cutter and my cutting board, and I measure the right length, and cut the glass. Karen must think either I'm fucking nuts or I'm some form of packrat, in that I was able to say, "Oh, glass too long? Got it covered. No prob. What? You don't have a glass scoring device in your house? Freak." (Of course I didn't say that. I kept repeating, "Muy agredecido! MUCHAS GRACIAS, estoy MUY AGRADECIDO! Muchisimas gracias, Karen!")

And so we (by "we" in this paragraph I mean "me") cuts the glass, and we (SOMEHOW) fits the glass back in the Jalousie clips (by the way, if you do a Google search for Jalousie and Miami my blog is like the third or most popular thing to come up... that's surprising, no?) and we closes the window (of course, laying cardboard down in front of the window in case the spitjob doesn't hold and the glass goes clattering out, because if it busted again, I'd be shit out of luck and fucking Twin Cities Glass isn't open on Saturdays [Yeah, that's right. FUCK YOU, TWIN CITIES GLASS! WHAT?! WORKING PEOPLE DON'T NEED GLASS MEASURED AND CUT ON SATURDAYS?!]) and somehow it holds...

And then... we tapes the jalousie handles together because, let's face it, I'm stupid enough to open the fucking windows AGAIN, even though I know what the results will be unless I take affirmative action to prevent myself from being a victim of my own stupidity.

And then we're sick of having two busted windows, so we cuts two pieces of cardboard, and we glues them together, and jams them in the busted Jalousie slat at the top of our kitchen window. I don't care if I get a fine or in trouble... aren't the windows common areas of the condominium!? Shouldn't the association fix them!?!

Grumble....

So... yeah. I guess there's a happy ending in there somewhere. A generous neighbor gave me a piece of glass that I cut to fit. Maybe next weekend I'll pop by Rowe Art Studios on 72nd Avenue between Miller and Bird and buy some frosted glass to jam into the top jalousie slot. And maybe I'll get a piece of 18" x 4" glass cut for Karen and Jerry's place. And maybe I'll go to Hialeah to the Jalousie Part Replacement Factory...

Or maybe I'll just drink next Saturday to forget the pain of Monday...

And that, folks, is my life.

Jalous?

(HAH!)