Mystery solved

Sometimes my husband and I send naughty text messages to each other. Adding to the excitement of the messages themselves is the constant risk that one of us will accidentally Twitter our message instead. I apologize ahead of time for what you may one day be exposed to from our mistells. Speaking of risky behavior, my nail lady LeAnn (as in the woman who does my acrylic fingernails) asked for some advice today. She stammered out, "I have a really stupid question. And I'm not sure if you'll know, but maybe you will. I mean, I don't think it's really your thing, but you're smart ... so maybe you'd know something ..."

Me: "Oh, for Pete's sake LeAnn, what's your question?"

LeAnn: "Do you know how they make meth? I just know it has something to do with cold medicine."

Me: "Sudafed is what you're thinking. There's other household products involved but I don't remember what. Why do you ask?"

LeAnn: "I'm worried about my son. We have some cold medicine in the house and I don't think he's taken it but I'm not sure how all that works."

Me: "You don't need a box of Sudafed, LeAnn. You need a crate of it. So I don't think that's his issue."

LeAnn: "Well, he just spends a lot of time in the bathroom with the water running."

Me: "How old is he?"

LeAnn: "18. And I go in there and I can't find any drugs or anything."

Me: "He's jerking off in the bathroom, LeAnn."

LeAnn: "He doesn't have any money for drugs, so I'm not sure what he could be buying. But he's in there 3 or 4 times a day."

Me: "He 18. I have a pretty good idea of what he could be doing that's free."

LeAnn: "You think? Oh, I hope that's it!"

Me: "Has he been acting strange or agitated like he's on drugs?"

LeAnn: "No if anything he's been really calm."

Me: "Mystery solved."

Sticks and stones and things that hurt me

These sticks are designed to make it difficult to kick in a door. Rich bought two of them when we were at our old house and at Target last week he bought two more for our additional doors in the new house. I hate these sticks. Hate is a strong word. But I really dislike the sticks and I really wish we didn't have them in the house. I'm not sure why we need them; I'm not sure that they do that much good. They leave black marks on the walls next to the door, they have fallen on my foot more than once and it's one more thing keeping me from getting the door open in the morning and putting the dogs out. But still we have them.

When Rich put the two extra sticks in the shopping cart last week, I instantly fell into a funk. I didn't want them but told myself I was willing to humor Rich. But as we walked around the store I was more adamant I didn't want them in our house. I didn't understand why we had to have them. I wanted Rich to explain to me his logic.

We went back and forth with not much progress in our debate over the merits of sticks. I started to get frustrated because it's not normally the way we communicate. Normally, we can resolve disagreements pretty easily. But we kept reaching an impasse when I wanted a logical reason why we needed the sticks and he felt his wanting them was enough.

Rich told me that he wanted to do everything he could to make sure that I was safe. It wasn't about keeping burglars from taking our stuff. It wasn't about any of the stuff, actually. It's just me. I think he would have been content to have just one stick at our bedroom door as long as I never left the room (and would agree to shutting the bedroom door, which I won't). His goal is to keep bad things from happening to me and if something were to happen that he felt he could have prevented, he would never forgive himself.

I'm not sure how I feel about all this. I'm all for precautions to make sure we're safe. We lock our doors, we have exterior lights, we have two big dogs, we have a shotgun in our bedroom. Do we really need sticks in the doors too? Why now? He never had sticks in doors as a kid. Did he not need sticks in the door when he lived with his brother? Did he not need sticks in the townhouse with his ex-wife? Why do I have to endure the annoying sticks? It's a matter of making Rich feel safe. Not for himself, but for me.

Rich tells me to "be careful" every time I leave the house. He puts a chair in front of the door in our hotel rooms. He notices when people are watching us in a crowd. He knows the number of exits in any room he's in. He doesn't like to sit with his back to the door. And I'm the one handing out fliers to come look through our house before we move in. We're very different when it comes to trust and security.

But we have met in the middle in many ways. Before Rich moved to the old house, I left my keys in the front doorknob overnight on two different occasions. Now I am sure to hang them on the hook in the house. When we first met, I was an avid open bedroom door person while Rich would shut and lock the bedroom door. He relented and we now keep all our bedroom doors open so the pets can roam free. He'll even sit with his back to the door on occasion. He's not the fretful man I first met. But somewhere in him he believes that if things really are so fantastic, it's only a matter of time before the proverbial shoe will fall. And if that giant shoe were to fall on me, no number of door sticks would ever make it better again.

This afternoon our ADT representative sat at our dining room table and wrote up the contract on a new security system. On the 27th technicians will install the 10 window sensors downstairs and the two windows in our master bedroom upstairs. We'll have sensors on all four doors to the house. The system will chime and announce when the doors open (which is handy regardless of security). We'll have a heat detector in the kitchen and a smoke detector upstairs. And I'm hoping this means we'll be able to put the sticks away.

I want Rich to not worry anymore. I'm not going to make major changes to my behavior, but I can see that putting so much energy into trying to keep another person safe that you can't control would be exhausting. Remember Buttons and Mindy? I feel like Mindy and Rich is Buttons, always trying to keep me safe. So we'll pay $42 a month to be able to lock the house down and not trip on sticks.

Home sweet someone else's home

Dear tenants in our old house, Today is move-in day for your new home and let me be the first to say welcome! I know you were hoping to move into another house with a more modern kitchen, but that house sold, so you're managing with our house. The appliances are older here, but it's still very nice. Since it's your first night here, I wanted to give you a few hints about the place.

The upstairs will always be warmer than the downstairs. That's just the way it is with single zone heat in a two story house. You'll get used to it. I suggest putting computers downstairs, though. Also, the air return is in the living room and it's really loud but it's the only place it could go without a lot of work to move it to the hall. Again, you'll get used to it. Just keep the remote handy when you're watching TV in there.

All the keys for the house (front and back doors, door knobs and dead bolts) are keyed with the same key. My father did that for me before I moved into the house back in 2002. It's incredibly handy to not have more keys than a janitor on your key chain. The front porch lights are on a timer that's incredibly complicated to set. Honestly, I've never set it myself but just let my father mess with it when he was house-sitting. Maybe he'll house-sit for you too and fix your timer as the seasons change. Take note that you have to have at least one non-fluorescent light bulb in the lights to power the timer. I'm still not sure why that's the case, but I just accepted it. Daddy could explain it to you, but it wouldn't be a short explanation.

We repainted the upstairs bathroom for you so it's no longer Pepto pink with flower basket borders around the top. Trust me, it was just as horrible as it sounds. You're welcome. Daddy even threw in a new vent cover for the AC vent. For that matter, we painted the entire house except for the closets to give you a fresh start. We also replaced all the carpet in the house and most of the tile. The carpet is significantly nicer than anything we ever had living there, so please try to keep it nice. I can recommend a good shampoo unit for your dog's inevitable accidents. Our dogs had plenty of their own there (hence your new carpet).

We've already run DirecTV and cable lines all through the house. Please don't let the installation punks staple coax cable to the outside of the house; it's ghetto and unnecessary. We also replaced the roof and pressure washed the entire outside of the house so it has that new house smell inside and out. I called and changed over the insurance from vacant property to rental property and you've signed the lease. You've got keys to the place and when I drove by this evening I could see you prepping for your move. The rental agency assures us everything is squared away.

The neighbors are nice enough and tend to keep to themselves. The old lady next door frets if your dog barks too much, so try not to stress her out. And the sheriff on the other side lets his dogs wander into the front yard to poop. It's very annoying; feel free to fuss at him about that.

I'm nervous about renting to you. It's not you really - it's me. I'm nervous about someone else living in my house ... OUR house. That house was a rental property of my parents' before I moved there and there were some disastrous mishaps there (one day I'll tell you the long story of the ice maker ruining the floor and my father scarring his arms to bleach the floor boards under the house). I rented that house from my parents and then bought the house from them. It was my safe haven after the divorce. It was the home where my neurotic dog Sarah blossomed into the fantastic elder stateshound that she is today. It's where my aloof cat Isis learned to snuggle. Eventually I convinced Rich to move here from Richmond and it's where Rich and I got our first live Christmas tree together (and kept it up until February). It's where we had one absolutely epic fight by the front door at 1am and where years later we spent our wedding night. We've had sex in every room of that house (you're glad for the new paint and carpet, aren't you?).

My parents have counseled me on house buying over the years. They own over a dozen rental properties in the area, so they've gotten pretty good at buying houses. But in their entire lives my parents have never sold a house. So I'm not very good at letting go of a home and letting someone else take it over. If the mortgage were a little less (and the insurance not so much) I could have been tempted to leave it vacant.

Try to remember that this isn't just a random investment property of ours. It's not a house someone in New York bought to flip before the bottom fell out of the market. It's not someone's eventual retirement home that you're just squatting in for a few years. It's our first home. We're willing to share it with you for awhile, but please be good to it. Seeing that house get trashed might break my heart. But seeing you take care of it and enjoy it could really do me some good.

Oh, and don't eat the apples off the tree in the front yard. They're a novelty the first year, but you'll grow to hate them. We just keep the tree up for the doves that nest in it each year. Consider them sub-letters.

I hope you like it here in Ocean View.

Welcome to the neighborhood, Genie