Dispatch from the kitchen remodel, vol. 3

The kitchen:

The place where food is prepared by loving hands from a culinary artist.

The place where that first Cup O Joe gets your day started.

The place where you eat your sandwiches and just about any other meal you can get away with over the sink instead of the table.

The place where holiday warmth is made and memories are forged with cookies, pies and turkeys.

Where you let the dishes pile as high as the proposed space elevator even though the dishwasher sits by with the eagerness of a child at an amusement park.

Where you sneak in those extra forbidden calories at 2am over a plate of sliced turkey and a gob of mayonnaise big enough to stop the heart of an elephant.

The place that for the past nine years has been an eyesore of outdated and worn fixtures and broken tiles that make you ashamed to call yourself a co-op owner.

The place from where your spouse has glared at you holding a rolling pin with your name on it while you luxuriated on the couch with your ps3 controller killing zombies.

Where you stand proudly holding your tools ready to begin the daunting yet easy task of updating the heart of your home.

Where your plan of two days of easy demo has devolved into an epic of destruction worthy of a Cecil B DeMille picture or a Greek tragedy.

Where you won’t admit this is going to be tougher than you thought.

Where one by one you find more unexpected surprises of handiwork horror than Adam’s Apples at that cheap new strip club your buddies recommended.

Where you wonder, “Did people not know how to build in 1957?”

Where you lie in the corner in the fetal position with tears streaming down your face because you’re in way over your head and you haven’t the guts to tell anybpody.

Where a beam that may or may not be holding up the floor above hangs precariously by two nails because you pulled out the other two dozen before hearing that ominous creak and seeing the ceiling sag beneath the weight of the obese diabetic on the third floor.

The place they’ll find your body under the debris that used to be your building if you don’t figure out how to solve that pesky load bearing beam problem.

The place where you are suddenly struck with inspiration as if all your Italian Renaissance ancestors parted the skies and tapped you on the forehead.

The kitchen: the place where you will build your new sculpting studio, for you live in New York City where the cuisines of the world are no further than your iPhone and you can live like the girls on Sex In The City like you’ve secretly always wanted to.

The kitchen cum sculpting studio; where the ink on your freshly served divorce papers will sit atop the pedestal that will one day seat a beautiful model for you to sculpt out of fine Italian marble just as soon as you build a pedestal and find a beautiful woman desperate enough to pose naked for you.

The kitchen; the place you had better snap out of it and put that beam back before the neighbors upstairs realize everything in their apartment is pooling in the middle of their kitchen floor.

The kitchen, yes the kitchen where one day you’ll wonder what possessed you to think you had a clue look back on all this and laugh---from your farmhouse in another state.