Ghosts in the Wind Get Under My Skin
“Shut All Doors Securely And Tightly!” – this is the text of a sign I have made that I will be attaching to every door in the house at once. Seems that I live in a house that can only be described as “drafty”. Yet, drafty, as an adjective, doesn’t really do it for me. It’s too nice, like ducky or daft. The word I’m looking for needs to be much harsher in tone and must fully embody the creeping annoyance that comes from a door left slightly ajar that begins to beat on its frame from the push and suck of those windy ghosts who roam my floors. It’s driving me mad.

We like to leave a few windows open for the cats to perch on during the day. Depriving them of this would make us terrible parents. But the crosswinds that rip through the house in the later stages of April make it sound like we have a gaggle of small children living with us and they are constantly running around the house – up the stairs, down the stairs – slamming every door they go through. I work in my home office on the second floor of the house. My office takes up the entire second floor. But you need to open a door at the bottom of the stairs and at the top of the stairs to enter my office. This fucking double door combination is my wind-party nemesis. The worst offense occurs when I open the door at the top of the stairs, run down the steps and fly open the door at the bottom of the steps. This creates some kind of epic vacuum effect and the door at the top slams shut so hard that I have to *cringe* and then turn to make sure it hasn’t burst into a million little splinters.

This is fascinating stuff isn’t it? No doubt Dear Reader you are asking yourself, “why am I still reading this guy go on and on about the fucking doors in his house?”

To that I have no answer. Only you can dig deep enough into your own soul to figure that one out. I can only promise more of the same.

Ok. So what really annoys me is not the slamming doors. That’s loud, harsh, quick, painful only for a second. What really irks me is when I leave the bottom door slightly open and don’t close the top door all the way either. Then I’m fucked, because then comes the creeper – the drunk rhythm of the two doors talking to one another in slurred morse coded messages. Oh how we love to invent new and beautiful ways to torture ourselves.

Present solutions I have thought of include: a) renting a chipper from Diamond Lake Rental and feeding all the doors in the house to it or, b) installing some kind of door control spring like this one that gently remembers to close all my doors for me.

Also, and totally unrelated to doors (unless of course you slam your fingers in a door and begin to bleed), vegan friendly but completely disgusting Bacon Band-Aids.