The Junk Drawer

Because we apparently angered the furniture gods, Dave and I are still having problems with our living room. In this case, it’s a problem with our lamps. More on that in a minute.

I promised an update on the state of the living room. Here it is:

When we bought our couch and chair (the one with the black cat on it), we realized that they needed to be separated by lots of space. It looked too cramped with everything on one side of our small room. The coffee table is now scratched beyond recognition because of the trouble-making cat you see on the couch, so now it serves as our TV stand.

And yes, that’s a teddy bear sitting next to him. It belongs to the third cat, Stinky (not pictured). Yeah, my cats have favorite stuffed animals. Got a problem with that?

With the set now split apart, we needed something to bridge the canyon in the middle of the room, so we threw down a rug and pulled the red chair in from another room.

Yes, we know it looks like we were inebriated when we set it up like this, but it fits our style and we don’t mind that the colors don’t match. We’re choosing to call this look drunken feng shui eclectic.

So what’s up with the lamps? Long story. It involves a set of brass balls.

We bought two lamps (you see only one here) from a place about 20 miles from home. It was a pain in the butt to drive there, but we’d spent weeks on an unsuccessful hunt for a specific kind of brass lamp, and we got it on good authority that this place would have what we wanted.

Turns out they had tons of brass lamps in their showroom, but we ultimately went with a catalog order because it offered brass lamps with pull chains instead of on/off knobs. We insisted on pull chains with brass balls hanging from them. But ordering from a catalog meant a six week wait.

Six weeks finally came and Dave picked up the lamps and brought them home. We ordered two of the same one. And why do I want to kill people now? They didn’t match. One set of balls was smaller than the other set. So we hiked back to the lamp store and plopped them down on the counter.

"Hi. We bought these lamps and they don’t match. See how the pull chains are different? These balls are smaller than those balls. Plus they hang crooked. And when you pull on one, the chain grinds."

"I see."

"And one of the sockets is broken. The bulb won’t light."

"OK."

"And see how the shine is duller on this one versus the other?"

"Uh-hmm."

We expected to hear "We’re sorry. We’ll order another one." Instead we got "Hmmm, not sure what I can do here."

"Say what?"

"They were imported. I’m going to have to let the company know. They might not even know they’re having a problem."

Still taking in the part about "not sure I what we can do here," I almost missed that last little nugget "…they’re having a problem" as in, she didn’t feel she had any responsibility to make things right. Lady, it’s not the company who has a problem. You have a problem. Me.

She said she’d call today and let me know what the company can do for us. Said she’d order another set and maybe they’d come in identical.

What. The. Hell.

"Maybe they’ll come in as a matched set? I don’t understand."

"Sometimes this happens with lamp manufacturers. You can’t guarantee that if you order two, they’ll be identical." She even had the nerve to say "If you hadn’t seen the two mismatched ones together, you wouldn’t even have noticed the brass balls were wrong if they’d both come in with the balls you don’t like."

"But we ordered the lamp with the bigger balls. They look better than the smaller balls. We want the bigger balls."

I asked her to cancel the replacement order. Fine. And why am I still cranky about this? Because we’re total idiots and left the lamp shades at home and now we have to drive another 40 miles to return them. We thought they would just replace the lamps and so we didn’t think to take the shades with us.

So now we’re just hoping the stupid lamp store will reimburse us at 100%. And I’m hoping a place that sells the brass lamps with big balls will come to me in a vision. We are angry and still lampless. Will someone please throw us a bone?

All we wanted was nice, normal furniture and lamps with balls that match. We do not know what we’ve done to deserve this. A friend of mine said he recently had to replace his furniture and he and his wife went to ONE store and picked out things they liked in TWENTY MINUTES. I hate him and I hope all his stuff falls apart the day after his warranty runs out.

UPDATE 11/27: Dave dropped off the shades today and we got a full credit for everything. We’re back to square one again, but at least the nonsense with the lamp store is over!

They can’t say I didn’t try.

Back on October 1st, I made a resolution to stop saying "like" so much. I got tired of hearing myself say it in every other sentence. I vowed to drop a quarter in a jar every time I used it as a filler word. I dropped a lot of quarters, and then bills, as you can see.

I would have had the same degree of success if I’d vowed to, say, drive to work every day backwards at 120MPH wearing big clown shoes. It fast became an impossible task.

Thankfully, resolutions are meant to be broken. So I’m back to saying "like" and what a relief. LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE!!! Ahhhh, that feels better.

Throughout my little experiment, every time I felt a "like" coming on, I would stall, stutter, and stumble for something else to put in its place. Or I’d just skip the word entirely and replace it with an uncomfortably long pause. But that was unsatisfying, like when you feel a sneeze coming on, but can’t get it out.

I wanted and needed a "like" in there and it felt ridiculous to try not to do it. It got embarrassing, too, because people thought I was having a stroke when they saw that vacant look in my eyes while I searched for a word. She alright? What’s wrong with her?

After a few weeks of this crazy challenge, something really weird started to happen. I developed other speech and gesturing problems when I talked.

Out of nowhere, I began to say "literally" a lot, even when I knew it was stupidly inappropriate. As in, "Jason, I literally forgot my lunch today. Wanna go out for something?" It’s as though my brain was looking for any filler word, no matter how dumb it sounded.

Whenever "literally" didn’t cut it, out came the air quotes.

I’ve been accused of being animated with my hands when I talk excitedly about something, but I’ve never done the index and middle finger quotation marks thing to express sarcasm or anything else. This may be a subconscious gesture due to my obsession for finding pictures to submit to my favorite specialty blog. Or it could be that if I wasn’t letting myself speak the way I wanted, my hands were taking over by force.

So what did I learn from all this? I learned that the likes, the you knows, and the I means are essential in speech. I learned that it’s not a personal weakness to use them, unless you’re a teenage girl who uses "like" every third word. I mean it, ladies. You sound flighty and stupid and you’re giving me a headache. Bring it down a notch, will ya?

Would I try this again? No. Did anything good come out of this? Yes! I have just over $100 in my Like Jar, which I’ll put to good use for Christmas. It was an interesting savings plan, one I didn’t have to think about.

Saving without pain. I like when that happens.

I recently bought my own domain name, JunkDrawerBlog.com, and made the switch from the default Blogspot address (kathyfrederick.blogspot.com) to the new one on Wednesday.

Today I’ll review why you should move to your own custom domain and how I got there with the help of fellow blogger, Blog Bloke. I focus on the Blogger platform, but WordPress, Typepad and other users can benefit from this, too.

There are several reasons why you should get your own domain name:

Credibility: Bloggers with their own domains enjoy a higher level of credibility than those who don’t. Having your own domain shows you’re putting time into your blog and want to distinguish yourself from the millions of other blogs that are created every day. A custom domain says “I’m a serious blogger and I’m here to stay.”

Memorability: For the four months I used my default Blogspot address, I became increasingly frustrated with giving out my blog’s address. It was too long and completely forgettable. Sure, I could send people a link, but if I gave it out verbally, there was almost no chance it’d be remembered. That meant I lost a potential reader. With JunkDrawerBlog.com the recall level increases significantly.

Pagerank: When you use your own domain, your site will be ranked higher in search engine results than if you use the Blogspot sub-domain. Higher pagerank puts your blog in front of more eyes, and that’ll bring you more traffic.

Branding: With my own domain, I’ve essentially branded myself. With my old address, kathyfrederick.blogspot.com, I identified with my personal name (not my blog, where the focus should be), and with Blogger (why should they get all the attention?). With JunkDrawerBlog.com, my blog name is the focus and it becomes my brand and my identity.

How I made the move to JunkDrawerBlog.com

To be honest, there were times I just wanted to pay someone else to do it so I could get back to writing, which is why I’m blogging at all. Just because I’m in the computing field didn’t mean I wanted to spend my time figuring out the intricacies of making the transition.

That’s where Blog Bloke comes in. There are gazillions of blogs out there on the topic of blogging, mostly with a focus on how to make money. That has never been and will never be the reason I blog. What I needed was help with the technical aspects of blogging itself, and not vague descriptions about how to employ certain techniques and methods. I needed detailed tutorials and I hit the jackpot with Blog Bloke.

When I finally decided it was time to bite the bullet and move over to JunkDrawerBlog.com, I used this post as my guide, and it’s what I recommend you study and refer to when it comes time for your move. Believe it when he says it’s proven to work. It worked for me. In fact, it was the only tutorial I found that gave specific enough information to get the job done.

Why I almost had a heart attack

The above tutorial works under certain circumstances assumed to already be in place. The one tweak I had to make for it to work was return to GoDaddy, where I registered my new domain, and “unpark” it. When I first bought it, there was a question during setup that I answered incorrectly, which caused me to almost have a coronary when I followed the rest of the Bloke’s tutorial.

When a domain is “parked,” it means it’s not yet available for public consumption. Domain registrars usually park a domain by default when it’s registered. My mistake was accepting that default option. When I transferred my Blogspot address to the new domain, up came a huge “404 Server Error” and no blog!

I immediately undid the transfer and then spent the better part of Wednesday researching why my blog wasn’t displaying. Once I discovered the concept of parking and unparking, I went back to GoDaddy and unparked the domain. Then I resumed the transfer, as per Bloke Bloke’s tutorial, and my blog magically reappeared. I also started breathing again. When the blog you’ve worked so hard on suddenly isn’t available, it’s a very scary and panic-inducing event. Don’t let this happen to you! It ain’t pretty.

I’m still no expert on the technicalities of blogging, but Blog Bloke is. Check out his blog for everything you could possibly want to know about making your blog a shining star among millions.

Blog Bloke is a class act and I thank him for all the FREE help he’s given me during my blog’s upstart. He just made me a member of the Blokester Network and I couldn’t be more honored.

Well, I finally did it! I bought my own domain name, JunkDrawerBlog.com.

I’m still hosting my content on Blogger, but now I’m redirecting everyone to the new address. It’s far easier to remember than the old one. The good news is you don’t need to change anything to get to The Junk Drawer.

If you’ve bookmarked me, or subscribed to my feed, you’ll notice that only the URL has changed. If you’re sharing my site with anyone (and thanks if you do!), just tell ’em I’m at JunkDrawerBlog.com and they’ll find me.

One final note: If you are considering starting your own blog, listen to me and listen to me good. Before you do anything, buy your own domain name so you don’t have to go through the hassle of switching over later, like I did.

I’ll explain how painful that was in a future post so that you’re sufficiently scared into doing what I tell you.

Until then, Happy Thanksgiving! May your pants still fit you by the end of the day.

News flash: I just learned my old Catholic grade school is celebrating its 80^th anniversary. A call went out to former students to send in a little blurb about where we are now and any memories about the school we wanted to share.

Hmmm. Memories? Share? With the school that gave me the memories I’d rather forget? Tell me, did anyone have a joyful grade school experience? If you did, you’re either lying or you were the kind of student who made life miserable for the rest of us.

I’m going to take a trip down memory lane, but it’s just for the nerds, the shy people, the insecure and the socially-awkward. So get lost, perfect people. You’re not welcome here. Neener, neener, neeeeeener! If you were like me and wonder how you made it through school and came out the other side, hop on the bus. We’re going for a ride!

You’ll see soon there is no rhyme or reason to what I remember about grade school. But knowing a little bit about Grade School Me at least puts things in perspective:

Fact 1: I had to wear a plaid uniform every day, which could be worn only with a white blouse, white or green socks, and sensible shoes. The only thing that made you unique was the length of your skirt. The popular girls always wore them short, short, short!

Fact 2: My skirt was one of the longest of any girl’s in the school. The rule was “Hemlines below the knee.” The only Moms who followed that rule were mine and the mother of a girl who went on to become a nun.

Fact 3: I wore glasses from kindergarten to third grade. To jack up the ridicule quotient, I also had to wear a patch over one eye to improve the strength of the other, though thankfully, not during school. But I was still known as the poor little Pirate Girl by people who saw me wear it.

Fact 4: I had kinky curly hair and tried to wear it as a shag. I have pictures of how this looks, but they’re in a safe-deposit box where they can’t hurt me anymore.

Fact 5: The first four letters in my last name were M-E-S-S, which lent itself to some interesting name-calling by all the mean girls, as in “Kathy, did you mess yourself today?”

With that vision of Grade School Me in your head, perhaps it won’t surprise you what Grown Up Me remembers. Ready?

Day 1: I Hate it Already

By far, the worst memory is of my first day of kindergarten. I felt like my Mom had sent me off to prison. I cried so hard, I almost threw up. None of the other kids was having a problem, and realizing this only made things worse. My mother was called to come collect me. I don’t recall how the second day went, although it’s possible a teacher’s assistant sat with me to make sure I didn’t go AWOL. I really wanted out.

The Bishop is Coming! The Bishop is Coming!

One day in the 7^th grade, our principal got a call from the diocese that the bishop was coming for a visit. I don’t recall why he was coming, but I got the sense that it wasn’t expected. Because as soon as the word got out, I was handpicked along with another student to run outside with brooms, dust pans and garbage bags to furiously tidy up the front of the building for his visit. Leaves, garbage, branches, dog poo, you name it. What said “Housekeeper and Landscaper” about me, I’ll never know.

Roll with it, Baby.

During a 4^th grade talent show, I massacred the gymnastics routine I’d been practicing for days. I’d forgotten almost all of it, so to the tune of It’s a Small World, I did the only part I could remember — somersaults. That, and oh yeah, more somersaults. Roll, roll, roll up the mat, Roll, roll, roll, down the mat. I ended the performance with a fist-pumping ta-DA! I got a round of applause, but only because the audience was happy I’d put an end to my own suffering. Worst. Performance. Ever.

I’ll Cast a Spell on You!

In the 3^rd grade we had the nun from hell. Only one person liked her. God. And we weren’t even sure of that. Her name escapes me at the moment. Let’s just call her Sister Hates-Kids-A-Lot. One day while she led our class down to the gym for an assembly, Sister Hates-Kids-A-Lot fell down the stairs and broke her arm. Then she did something that we didn’t expect. She began to cry real, human tears. We thought we should help her, but we were immobilized by fear and confusion. Fear, because she was the nun with death ray eyes, and confusion, because we didn’t think she had a soul, much less the capacity to feel pain and emotion. After the accident, we still hated her and she still hated us. And we feared her even more, now that she was wearing a cast on her arm and could use it to crack open our skulls anytime she wanted. To this day, I feel guilty for not having helped her, but I’m also not ashamed to say we thought she had it coming.

What’s in a name? Too many letters, that’s what.

I was the last child in kindergarten to be able to print her full name without the aid of a cheatsheet placard. In my defense, my last name was twelve letters long. But being the last at anything is no fun, and I remember that trailing-behind feeling like it was yesterday.

The Agony and the Irony

In the 4^th grade, I received a punishment that did not fit the crime. Painfully shy, I wouldn’t open my mouth unless someone talked to me first. Even then, I was afraid to say anything. One day, as class was preparing to take a quiz, I was turned around in my seat talking to another girl, but never realized the test was starting. The teacher loudly and ceremoniously called me a Chatty Cathy – a Chatty Cathy! Me! The one who never speaks! — and told me to turn around and write a big fat “F” on my paper. She said nothing to the girl behind me who was also talking. I was mortified that day and ruined for weeks after that. Just when I thought I’d finally put it behind me, Geico came out with this commercial. Whenever I hear it, I’m transported back to the 4^th grade and I flop to the floor, start sobbing and my husband has to remind me where I am and what year it is.

Being a bad sport about it

In the 6th grade, I made my first attempt at organized sports. I joined the basketball team and at the first practice got hit in the nose with the ball. I bled profusely and then promptly quit. This would be the first in a long line of sports I tried and sucked at: gymnastics, cheerleading, and softball, among others. If you’re a parent and your kids want to quit a sport, let them. There is no value in making them embarrass themselves in front of their classmates. No value at all.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Child Labor Laws

I recall the weekend one summer that some of us kids were picked for a chain gang, whose job it was to paint classrooms and hallways. I’m quite sure someone volunteered me for this job. I couldn’t have wanted to waste a weekend smelling paint and getting lead poisoning. Catholic schools always drew on slave labor one way or another. If it wasn’t painting the school, it was going door to door selling candy like some hobo begging for a place to sleep. But even hobos didn’t have to meet a quota.

I saved this next incident for last because while it starts out badly, it ends on a high note. You need to know that sometimes there was a silver lining.

She Almost Made a Grown Man Cry

My house was only four blocks from school, so I walked there and back every day. Sometimes I’d walk along with another student, Rob S., who lived in my neighborhood. One day as we were dismissed, I paired up with Rob and then heard my fifth grade teacher, Mr. G., inexplicably shout at us “Kathy and Robbie sittin’ in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g!” It embarrassed me so much I thought I’d die. I didn’t tell my Mom about the incident until the next morning, after stressing about it the whole night before. She made an effort to take my mind off it and I thought “Case closed.”

But what happened next, I’ll never forget. She showed up during recess, and in front of everyone, she marched right up to Mr. G and opened up a can of whoop ass on him. I had never seen my mother like that before or since. She stood there waving a finger at him “How could you say that? What is wrong with you? You ever do that again, and you’ll have me to deal with.” Mr. G. was never more polite to me than after he got a face full of Mom.

Perhaps I’ve triggered some grade school memories that you have. Perhaps you’ll hate me now for doing so. Would anyone care to share their grade school horrors? You’ll find a box of tissues and a shoulder to cry on in the comments section.

The Junk Drawer is here for you.