Once again, as we always do on weekdays now, after the nearly-successful kitchen makeover soon-to-be-featured on a television station near you through all the lines and waves propagated by satellites and repeaters somewhere (I can’t tell you which station it will be on just yet—there are clauses in the contract that prohibit us from revealing this information, clauses that bind us to one action or to another, clauses that guide our responses to this thing we have chosen to submit ourselves to—I hold these clauses to me like I do paper money when it is warm and freshly pressed and I get lucky with it at the bank), we find ourselves waiting for the stove.

The stove never comes on weekends—or so we thought initially. The waiting is a saga that we repeat. We wake just after six because the contract stipulates that if the stove is to arrive that day, we will receive a call between seven and nine—this is before my wife’s traditional time to wake, since she works late into the night and likes to sleep until ten if she can, which is not often any more. If we are not there to receive the call, they will not attempt to deliver the stove, and the whole thing will repeat.

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Everyone looks better when they're under arrest is a quote from the most excellent John Waters. Originally published in Ploughshares.