another brick in the wall

Since there are no shaolin classes Friday night, I sometimes stop at a bookstore or the local mall on my way home. Usually I'm not planning to buy anything in particular; it's more of a winding down walkabout after five days of Dwarf Rule*. And I like to ensure that I never become agoraphobic again.

This Friday was a bit different, as I was meeting a friend at Border's and I had just received my bonus. Of course it was suggested I celebrate by buying myself a little something. But, for reasons unknown, I couldn't work myself into a spending mood.

Although I did eventually end up buying a book, I actually found it a bit difficult to pay full price for it. This realization depressed me for a little while, and embarrasses me to admit it here, audience or no. I even considered going back to Borders and returning it. Have I doomed myself to be a cheapskate all my life? Or am I just out of the habit? (The book is John Lanchester’s “I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay.”)

Perhaps it's just as well I was in a penurious mood. Earlier today, the underemployed builder stopped by to diagnose the hole in the kitchen ceiling after first meeting with a potential brick mason. It's become obvious that the majority of my bonus will most certainly go for repairing the west side of the house.

Regarding the kitchen ceiling, it was one of those good news/bad news scenarios. Bad news: in addition to the ceiling's drywall being 1/4-inch thick, instead of the standard 1/2-inch material, the exposed wood had developed dry rot. Then he dug a bit further into the wood with a knife and found termite damage. The good news is that he insisted he would repair the ceiling for free, as he had so much spare time on his hands. Also, the termite damage was old and he couldn't find any active ones anywhere in the entire attic.

While I haven't decided to take him up on his offer of complimentary ceiling repair or not - I guess I'm being a typical, suspicious female - I insisted on taking him down to the Trinity Hall pub and buying him a Guinness for his trouble, which he accepted. We then got into a polite quarrel about who would finance the ceiling repairs. This was never resolved, but if he's able to find 1/4-inch ceiling drywall, he won't have to rip out the entire kitchen ceiling and replace it with 1/2-inch drywall. And we won't know that until tomorrow.

The part of all this that's causing me concern is that I don't know why he's doing this. He's only met me once before, and doing me a favor won't buy him brownie points with anyone else. While I"m not sufficiently conceited to think that every male wants to sleep with me, I'm equally bad at figuring out when someone is interested in me. And I didn't take much notice of him, except that he smelled good and drew really good diagrams of brick walls.