I'm not talking about Flat Stanley. He's still here, but the pictures are all taken, scanned, emailed and I spent yesterday writing commentary for each one and a little story about what Stan got up to while he's been here. Now all that's left is to send Stan home.

No, right now I've got the Diswasher Guys in my kitchen. Two of them. They are young and reasonably cute, and they don't have the whole ass-crack thing going on, so they're definitely not plumbers. They're sporting shirts with Whirlpool embroidered on them, even though our dishwasher is definitely not a Whirlpool. Whatever. It gives me confidence. The only thing is they tend to follow me about in tandem, and when they aren't moving they tend to stand there with both hands clasped behind their backs and their chests thrust out, like they're male models or bodybuilders or something. It's rather unnerving, but I can deal with it. They also wanted to make absolutely sure that I planned on paying them today, which is fair enough. Calliope made immediate friends with them both. She likes workmen of all description.

Traitor.

They've disassembled the diswasher all over the kitchen floor that was just mopped an hour ago. I can deal with that, too, as long as they fix the machine.

They were supposed to come, I was told, tomorrow. I went to the gym this morning, a bit later because it's Friday and it's always full of people buffing up for the weekend earlier on. When I got back I was absolutely starving, so I went ahead and ate something before showering.

Which is why, when Elvis called me at 1:00 to tell me that it had been changed to today, I hadn't even showered yet. Plus they were expecting money, and I had none so I needed to go to the bank machine. And, finally, that they would arrive between the hours of 3 and 7 o'clock. What kind of technician makes house calls at 7 pm on a Friday night? It's safe to say that I was not amused. In fact, it's an understatement. The PMS didn't help either.

It's been a beautiful day, as befits the first day of Spring. Sunny and warm and just perfect. Which is good, since I had planned to meet Miss Kitty and some of her girlfriends at a bar we like that overlooks the beach. It doesn't have a terrace, but it has big floor-to-ceiling windows that they slide open on nice days. It's like being in a treehouse. A treehouse that has a bar and a pool table, which is even better.

They're going to support a friend of ours tonight, who's directing the High School production of Arsenic and Old Lace that opens tonight. They decided that the best way to live through the experience was to get gently pissed first. Sounds good to me, although I told them I'd give the play a miss. We did it in High School, as it happens, and it's safe to say I've seen it already. About 75 times, more or less, although the number of times I've seen it straight through is quite a bit less than that.

It's a moot point now, of course, since as they are arriving at the Beach Bar (this very moment!), I'm stuck here with a disassembled dishwasher and two guys that don't appear to be in much of a hurry.

However, it would seem that God has taken pity on me. At about half past three, the clouds started rollling in. The sunshine is gone, now, and the clouds have been getting progressively darker. The wind has picked up as well.

It's the first day of Spring. What better time for a Spring Shower?

I'm feeling pretty springlike, though. Today I am wearing a long sleeved tee in robin's egg blue, in striking contrast to my usual choice of either black or white. My toenails were looking dinged up, so I figured as long as I was confined to quarters I might as well take off the old polish and give them a fresh coat of paint. In pink.

My toenails are always, always painted red. In the winter, it's a dark red. In summer, it's a bright and orangy red. Other times, they're painted a classic, red red. Whatever the shade, Dilettante's toenails are red.

Spring fever is the only explanation I can give for painting my toenails pink. I have painted them pink before, when I was going on a beach holiday-- hot pink, verging on neon. This isn't hot pink. It's a pastel, whitish pink. Pink pink. I'm not even sure when I bought the pink polish, or why. My fingernails are usually a neutral, fake french manicure, occasionally beige, and occasionally red (usually only for special occasions these days. I used to paint them red all the time but, you know, red shows chips.). In any case, they are never pink.

Oh well, it's nice that I got some use out of it, however it came to be in my manicure bag. Now that it's on, I'm not too thrilled with it. I think it will look nice in the summer though, when my feet are nicely tanned and not the pasty white they are now. Maybe that's why I bought the pink polish in the first place? Could be.

So, I was a third of the way through painting my toenails, foot propped up on the bidet (which, frankly, is the best use I get out of the darn thing) when the Dishwasher Guys arrived, as expected. It's like lighting a cigarette in a restaurant: if you paint them, they will come.

Except I wish they would go now. What I had to eat when I got back from the gym was more like a snack or a light breakfast. It's 5:30 now and I want them out of my kitchen so I can make some supper.

Which I won't be doing anytime soon. I just ventured into the kitchen, to find the dishwasher disassembled even more than before, which I wouldn't have thought possible. "This job," says Guy1, "is not simple. Do you understand?"

"I think so," I reply. "This job is difficult."

"Yes!" Says Guy1, then launches into a rapid torrent of Portuguese. The upshot seems to be that they want to put the machine back together and take it away with them so they can fix it at their workshop. Which is fine with me, as long as it gets fixed and as long as they leave soon.

Which they don't seem to be doing. Some cables were broken, which they taped back together, and they seem obsessed with checking to see if there is any electricity flowing through the damn machine. Guy1 keeps obsessively touching probes to the plug and peering at the voltage meter with a worried expression. Over and over and over again. The least he could do is fiddle with the wires or something between tests, but he doesn't seem to think that it would help. Maybe he expects it to fix itself.

Just peeked in on them now. Guy2 has joined the act, and they're metering the voltage on a different set of wires. At least the machine is standing up now, instead of lying prostate on the floor with its guts hanging out.

Whatever. They still seem determined to take it with them, and I'm ready for them to just go.

I've got some life to be living.