they work hard, so i don't have to.

to soothe those of you clamoring for content, i've decided to ask a few close friends of sweetney.com to provide guest posts for this week. the first (below) is from my dear friend kelly, aka kdiddy, who recently purchased her first home in mighty pittsburgh, PA.

My grandparents drove past the house yesterday and the seller was there, cleaning and fixing stuff up. My grandmother has bestowed upon our house the rating of “nice.” Which is huge. If you know my grandmother, you know that her approval is the difference between a peaceful life and spending your days fielding phone calls that consist of, “When are you going to do something about that house?” (See also: my mother) Of course, she did tell me last night that she's concerned about the chimneys. “What if they get struck by lightning? And collapse?” This is a very real fear for my grandmother. She is the woman who goes into a panic if someone she knows is staying in a building above the fourth floor because she insists that fire engine ladders only go to the fourth floor. So if you're on the fifth floor and a fire breaks out, you're fucked and then you have to hear my grandmother saying, “I told you!” during your time in eternity.

My grandmother's paranoia is legendary. Years of Irish Catholic guilt, old wives' tales, and gallons of vodkas and grapefruit juice have created the monster. To wit:

As a child, upon entering my grandmother's house, I would be scrutinized for an undershirt and, if wearing a skirt, a slip. Failure to wear these items would ensure my untimely death due to pneumonia.

My father once had the audacity to decorate the front door of our house with a green wreath for Christmas. In my grandmother's dimension, green Christmas wreaths = bad luck. My grandmother called him incessantly until he removed it. When I decorated the windows of my dollhouse with green ceramic wreaths, my grandmother feared for the bad luck that would be sure to visit my dollhouse.

My grandmother has participated in every chain letter that she has ever received. Thank dog she doesn't have email or she would never be able to move from the computer.

I have been told on numerous occassions that reading while on the toilet will give me hemorrhoids. So will sitting on cold pavement.

She keeps a Virgin Mary statue in her kitchen window to protect their house from the large trees that surround their house in the event that they are struck by lightning and fall over. Apparently, moving out of the woods has not yet occurred to her.

In high school, I got a stress fracture in my left foot. My grandmother gave my mom a bottle of blessed oil and instructed my mother to rub my foot with it every night. It didn't work.

I was not allowed to have a baby shower prior to the baby's birth since it would be bad luck to do so. Consequently, I never had a baby shower.

On New Year's Eve, the person with the darkest hair (since he came around, this honor has fallen to the boyfriend), has to leave the house at midnight through the back door and enter through the front door with a loaf of bread. Failure to do so will, say it with me now, bring us bad luck.

I can only imagine what kind of bizarre, new home rituals I'm going to be subjected to.

Comments

[stillheidi]

"I have been told on numerous occassions that reading while on the toilet will give me hemorrhoids. So will sitting on cold pavement."

OMG...I thought that was just my Grandmother! Except she called it "THE PILES"...She used to say "THE PILES...DON'T SIT THERE...YOU VILL GET THE PILES"....I only recently figured out that 'The Piles' are hemorrhoids!

[Heidi]

S - Will miss you while you're on hiatus. Thanks for the guest authors!

[kalisah]

HA! Those are great. Her grandmother sounds suspiciously like my MIL, who insists that SOMEONE WILL DIE if you put a hat on a bed.