What The Hell? Right?

As riotpup pointed out in a recent email, I post on Good Friday, and then nothing for two weeks. (More than two weeks?) Am I okay? Did I go off the deep end? Have I taken off for parts unknown?

Nope.

I'm here. Here in Bucks County.

Now there are numerous possible reasons I could point to for my silence. For one thing, my brother has been staying with me since my father's funeral.

Ah, my brother.

Love the guy!

No, really!

This is probably the most time we've spent together since we stopped sharing a bedroom when he moved out all those years ago when he was twenty and I was five. We have a good relationship--great as adult siblings go from what I've seen. But over the past few weeks, I've learned something about my brother that I was heretofore unaware of: my brother drinks way Way WAY too much coffee. He brews a pot in the morning, and sometimes has to replenish that mid-afternoon. When I would arrive home from a long hard day selling toilets and what-not at Ho(t)me(n) Depot, I would be greeted not by the peace and quiet and opportunities to putter and Get Stuff Done that I craved but by my hyper-caffeinated brother in a very manic state.

Not much time for blogging there.

Also, there's been the whole issue of Getting Stuff Done. My brother was a huge help with all of that. I arrived home work one day to find that he had cleaned out sixty years of accumulated junk--much of it destroyed and moldy from the Great Sump Pump Failure of 2006. All by himself. (That's what a pot of coffee will do for ya!) And we've had the carpets cleaned--a pointless effort as far as I'm concerned because I have my heart set on hardwood floors--that required moving all the furniture off the carpets.

The carpet cleaning has been interesting. The process the cleaning guy used involved stripping away the protective stuff on the carpets, and, as he warned us, this started the process of all the stuff buried within the piling of leaching up to the surface. So it's sort of been an olfactory Greatest Hits thing going on. ("Oh my gosh! I think I smell turkey gravy! From that Thanksgiving back in the Eighties when it spilled on the way to the table in the dining room...") And, of course, Faithful Companion has contributed his share of bodily fluids over the years, all of which are now being reprised.

Meanwhile, I've been turning my attention to getting the place gussied up in other ways.

Y'know, I should just throw in the towel and become an interior decorator or some shit. I know this guy who looks like a former Marine DI who now runs an auto body shop: military brush cut, sleeve tattoos, broken nose. He's a hairdresser. That always irked me. Okay. So you're gay. But why is it necessary for you to embody the stereotype?

But interior design seems like some great sucking black hole lately.

Anyway. The bathrooms.

Gonna be FAbulous.

Slate floors. Soaking tub (holds sixty gallons!). White subway tile in the bath surround. This amazing iridescent green mosaic tile on the tub deck and for accent. Soffit. These great Kohler fixtures I found. And on top of this antique dry sink we have, there's going to be a white vessel sink serving as the lavatory.

There WILL be artfully arranged ceramics, pebbles, and shells.

What's worse, there WILL be candles. Hella candles.

And most importantly, I'll be able to look forward to coming home and taking a Nice Hot Bath beneath an open window with the Spring breezes gently wafting over me.

I'm taking particular care in choosing a tub drain, since that's where I'll have to hook up my Shower-Shot so I can clean out my hole, and I'd rather have the turds go right down the drain instead of having to scoop them out and lob them into the (Kohler Santa Rosa One Piece) Toilet.

So it's gonna be pretty sweet.

Just the thing that a weary newyorker looking for a place in the country reasonable driving distance from the city might like to have waiting for him come Friday afternoon.

And then there's another reason why I haven't been posting much at all.

I have to wonder whether the subject of this weblog, to the extent that there is a subject, has been my father.

Now, technically speaking, the subject of SingleTails is Me. So for the past four-and-a-half years, has the subject of my life been my father? Has my father been sort of the organizing principle of my life? Without him, do I just not have much in the way of material on which to report?

Now, going forward, against what will I contend? For what will I strive?

Remains to be seen, I suppose.

I work tomorrow. Tomorrow night I'm hoping to host Way Hot Man for dinner and a bout of sweaty, adventurous sex. We have softball practice on Sunday which I'll be able to make due to nothing short of a miracle in Ho(t)me(n) Depot scheduling. I may have found landscaping help in the person of this terrifically hot man who is doing landscaping while he keeps an eye out for a Master. He arrives Sunday to take a look at the place.

So stuff is happening.

Anyway.

Gotta run. I want to shop for lighting fixtures before I head into work.