I’ve been having a lot of trouble trying to figure out how to follow
up the bonanza of depravity that was my last entry. And really, I’
ve got nothing. Nothing else so interesting or strange has really
happened in the last week. But is this keeping me from writing
anyway? No. It is not keeping me from writing anyway.
So today I decided that I would write about my weekend. But
before we go any further, let me first inform you that this entry
does not contain drag queens. None. Zero. Oh, I know you’re
disappointed. Suck it up!
So, what do you think I did this weekend? Bet you think I was out
drinking and partying and living it up like the wild little child I am,
right?
Hello...? RIGHT? Come on. That’s totally what you thought.
Anyway. You’re wrong. Because I spent my weekend painting my
garage. Yeah. Apparently, I just aged fifteen years in the course
of one week. Hi. I am suddenly a soccer mom. Without children.
This cannot possibly be a good thing.
And actually, I only painted one room of the garage. The storage
room. Which is maybe five by ten. Maybe. And it took me all.
Damn. Weekend. But let me tell you why.
First, I think no one has been inside this storage room since
possibly 1954, which is saying a lot, because the house itself was
built in 1970. And since that time, it is certain that no person has
tried cleaning the storage room. So...ew. I mean, people! You
cannot imagine the grossness that was this storage room! I will try
to help you, though. Imagine the following:
A window, that is being held shut by the power of a
yellow, sticky, snot-like funk;
Black, tarry, goopy, stains on every exposed shelf;
A ceiling that is completely obscured by dangling
cobwebs that are older than myself;
And a good inch of dried dead-bug-dust covering
every exposed surface.
Does this paint a vivid picture for you? Can you sort of imagine
what I was working with here? It was not pretty.
Anyway. I decided I would paint this room, so I went out and
bought paint. And of course, I decide to get all cute and paint the
walls and the ceiling and the trim all white, but to paint some of the
shelves and the floor a pretty sage color. As if this room were to
be decorated. With things like curtains, and art. And as if this
room were not actually a storage room which I am painting entirely
to prevent the dead-bug dust from congealing into a large, Men-In-
Black type monster that will come eat me in my sleep.
But guess what I had to do before I painted the room? Clean it.
Ew. This was not something I particularly wanted to do. So I
stalled. I went back to the hardware store and bought more paint.
I pulled a chair in front of the storage room and sat there, staring
at it. “I’m planning my attack!” I told myself. But I was lying. To
me.
Eventually, I couldn’t wait any longer, so I covered every exposed
inch of flesh with a long sleeved shirt and huge rubber gloves. I
also put on one of those really nice breathing masks. Because I
had no intention of inhaling bug bits, thanks. Asbestos? I don’t
care about asbestos. But bug bits I cannot tolerate.
And in I went. First, I vacuumed the room. Have you ever
vacuumed a concrete floor? It’s loud. Then I mopped. But
mopping only made the bug bits stick together. And the water
seemed to give new life to the mysterious black ooze, which began
trailing around after the mop. So really, the only thing the
mopping accomplished was to make the dirt wet.
I tried cleaning the shelves with spray cleaner, but since I hadn’t
been able to open the window yet (see snot-like funk, discussed
above), this only made me high. “Bugs!’ I started screaming.
“Why did you come here to diiiiiieeee?”
Finally, I realized that the bugs are not supposed to answer (they
had been), and so I decided to get that window open to get myself
some cross-ventilation like a smart girl. So I started trying to
remove the window funk. First, I tried coaxing the funk off with the
cleanser. No. Then I tried smacking the funk with a chisel. No.
Eventually, I ended up with a razor blade. Do you know that it is
hard to operate a razor blade when you are wearing huge rubber
gloves? And when you are accidentally high on household
cleaner? It is.
The razor blade did eventually work, though, and I was able to
slice the funk enough to actually open the window. And then there
was air! Blessed, fresh air. In the form of wind. Which
immediately blew through the room, gathering the remaining bug
bits. I watched as they swirled through the air and landed,
scattered, all over the still-wet floor. Oops.
I think that was the minute I gave up. I think that was the time
where I said, “FINE, Bugs. If you want to stay here so damn bad, I’
ll just paint over you.”
“We don’t think that’s a good idea,” said the bugs.
“Tough shit.” I snapped.
And that is exactly what I did. I started painting the floor, even
though there were still bugs on the floor. “You’re green NOW,
assholes!” I happily told them, as I rolled the roller across the
floor.
“You’re really...you should probably stop and think about this,”
said the bugs.
“Fuck off, Bugs!” I said. “I am so way smarter than you. Y’all are
all green now.”
When I was almost finished, I realized something. I was painting
the floor. First. Before the walls. Or the ceiling. Or the shelves. I
froze.
“Oh, fuck,” I muttered.
“Ha!” said the bugs.
So I had to stop, and then literally spend the next hour watching
paint dry. It was a fun hour.
“How did you spend your weekend?” people asked me on
Monday. “I watched paint dry,” I said, without irony. “And what’s
pathetic is that it’s really not the most boring thing I’ve ever done.
Did you know that the paint gets darker as it dries? It’s strange,
but TRUE!”
When the floor was dry, I went back in the room, a smarter
woman. A smarter woman who realized that she should probably
start at the top of the room and work her way down, so that the
splatters that were bound to occur would, by the powers invested
in me by gravity, be forced to fall downwards onto non-painted
things. So I started with the ceiling. “Hello, ceiling!” I said. “You
certainly are high today. Me, too!”
Anyway. I started with the ceiling. At this point, I was hot, so I took
off my long sleeve shirt, and continued working in a tank top. I
had one of those long, pole-type things attached to my roller, and I
started going back and forth over the ceiling. “Look at how white
and clean you’re getting,” I told the ceiling. “You look so pretty.”
At that point, the roller got mad, possibly because I was
complimenting everything in the room except for it, and it was
doing all the work anyway, so it was just going to show ME a thing
or two. So it broke. It broke right off the pole-thing. And it fell
right. On top. Of me.
Specifically, right in my hair. Did I mention it was covered in white
paint at the time?
Now, I had white paint everywhere. Paint was literally covering the
entire crown of my head like a wet, drippy hat. Paint was running
down my face. I ran inside to assess the damage in the mirror.
And there I saw that even then, things were actually worse than I
had thought, because not only did I have paint all over everything
of mine that is blonde, I had also, apparently, been working
diligently for the past several hours with a dead cockroach stuck
in my hair above my left ear. And now he was painted white. And
glued to my head.
“Ew, ew, EW,” I said, trying to pry him loose, and looking
desperately for the scissors.
“We warned you,” he told me.
I had to cut him out. And because the idea of cutting the dead
cockroach and having his little spiny cockroach legs fall on any
other exposed part of my body so skeeved me out, I decided to cut
my hair instead. It looks pretty. I have bangs now. I have bangs
on the side of my head. Not in the front; only on the side. Above
my left ear. Fucking bugs.
Anyway. After I removed the bug, I returned to painting. And I
returned to painting directly over the bugs that I was sick of
removing. The window, in particular, was very bad. The window
was completely encrusted with bugs. Actually, it still is. Only now,
they’re white.
I should also point out that the entire time all of this is going down,
my phone is ringing very regularly, and it is always my father on
the line. He was concerned because the storage room contains
the water heater, which contains a pilot light. And he feared that
the paint fumes would ignite, and I would blow the hell up. So he
called every hour or so to check on me.
“Hi,” he’d say. “Did you blow up?”
“No,” I’d tell him. “But there was a bug, and I dropped the paint on
my head.”
“Okay, then!” He’d say. “Now, don’t blow up. Bye.”
My family is used to this kind of thing.
I kept painting. The roller got all crusty and nasty with painted
dead bug parts, so I switched it out for another one. I did not blow
up. I painted the shelves, and got all creative and painted some
the same color as the floor. I painted over the black goop. I
removed cobwebs from my painted hair. I did not blow up.
I repainted the floor. When I painted next to the water heater, I
painted very fast. And then ran out of the room and waited for the
explosion. The water heater did not blow up. I did not blow up.
At the end of the day, the room actually looked amazingly nice.
Like a real room! With painted windows and a nice sage floor, and
some lovely coordinating shelves. I was ready to call Better
Homes and Gardens. I was very proud. “This is awesome,” I said
to the bugs.
“Yeah, we like it,” they agreed. “The sage is good on us.”
So, if y’all come over, feel free to take a gander at the lovely new
storage room. Comment on the lovely shade of sage on the
floors. Oooh and ahhh over the coordinating shelves. But don’t
ask about the faux finish I’ve got going on. Don’t ask how I
managed to get so much texture in my paint. It isn’t faux. It ain’t
texture. It’s bug.
And they said to say hi.
Watching Paint Dry
Blinded by the light! Wrapped up like...a something.
That is wrapped up...and blinded? Hmm. Yeah, that
song means nothing to me.
Special love box!
The following people are the
coolest. For varying reasons.
My AB don't mess around,
because she loves me so, and
this I know fo sho.
Coleen knows what's cooler than
cool--ICE COLD!
Allison don't want to meet your
DADdy.
Hannah Beth just wants you in
her CADdy.
Amy don't want to meet your
MOMma.
And Miss Sarah B. is shaking it
like a polaroid picture RIGHT
NOW.
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Y'all! Don't you want to join my shiny
new Notify? Why not? Is it because you
like making me cry?