“Housework, if it is done right, can kill you.” ~John Skow
Several weeks ago, I decided to embark on a little project called painting my bedroom. It should probably be more aptly named ‘a fantastic way for my head to meet the corner of a desk, over and over again’ because I about lost my damn mind. Patience is not a virtue and when a project requires roughly $200 in supplies and several coats of primer to get rid of the seizure inducing canary yellow color that the previous owner had put up, well then the mind; it is gone.
Mind that I did the requisite reading, hence the primer. But nothing prepared me for standing precariously at the top of a ladder in order to paint the very edges of the wall while lunging out towards the offending paint drops as Intense Teal paint falls on my brand new hardwood floors. And the cat tramps through to step in the paint, hiss, scratch me and then run away when I spray water on it as the dog eats the paint. I’m now wondering whether or not it’s possible for a puppy to pee blue.
Really it was just one big party-tastic weekend. The photo above is a good representation of how I’ve left my bedroom and high tailed it to DC (I’m writing this from my hotel with a lovely view of Dupont Circle) spontaneously. When my mother found out that I had to leave to go to DC, she volunteered to go to my place and finish painting while I’m away.
The above isn’t a sign of niceness or motherly love. It’s the sign of a woman desperate so very desperate to get her mooching daughter* out of her house that she’ll paint alone on a Sunday. This is a major step forward in our oft tumultuous relationship wherein we she says the sky is blue and I will fight her to the death that it’s actually green. I’m going to enjoy this moment of us finally agreeing that I need to get the hell out and for this moment of complete understand and bliss, I am so very thankful.
*Ok, if she’s ALREADY going to the grocery store, I don’t see why I should go as well. So I just tell her to pick up a few things. Necessities like fruity cheerios and three packages of veggie burgers. I just don’t understand the point of us both going there to spend money when she is doing it already.
The day I turned into my mother
“A child is a curly dimpled lunatic.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
On Friday evening I babysat for my seven-year-old cousin. She is the daughter of my 31-year-old cousin who used to babysit for me and even though I am mostly retired from babysitting, I feel moved to do her this favor after she endured a decade of torture courtesy of my punk ass. This includes that one time in the mall, when I loudly called her a bitch; because at nine, I had already mastered the art of pissing off someone in authority. In fact, I am so good at it now that I find myself in shock that I remain gainfully employed.
I arrived to a seven-year-old full of attitude and angst. And then she rolled her eyes at me and shook her neck at me and I had to restrain myself from removing each hair from her head. Instead I remained calm and asked what was the matter. It was the usual bullshit: She was forced to eat oatmeal for breakfast, she was forced to put on pants and then she mentioned a boy named Josh at her school. Something about how he used the word ‘penis’ and teased the girls in her class and sometimes he told really bad jokes. And for Chrissakes! He can’t spell orange! I was good and didn’t tell her that little boys grow up to be big boys. They’re just taller and harrier but just as goddamn stupid that she would be surprised that they’ve managed to remain alive for so long. There are times when I want to ask members of the opposite sex exactly how long their brains have been deprived of oxygen.
I kept my mouth shut, as difficult as that was, and told her that her choices were to either ignore him or be nice. She agreed. Then I told her that attitudes were unbecoming on young women so that if she had a problem with someone or something, then she should use her words instead of crying and throwing herself on the floor or tossing a random stool against the wall. Ho hum. Not 20 minutes later her head fell off of her body because she couldn’t eat my mozzarella sticks and then because I told her to go upstairs and brush her teeth and go to the bathroom and there was probably something else but I was busy trying to get an appointment scheduled for an emergency Tubal Ligation.
At that point in the evening, I told her to go to bed and then there were more tears because she NEEEEEEDED A STOOOOORRRRRYYYYY! And if she didn’t have a STORRRRRRYYYYYY then she couldn’t sleep. Then she tried to kick me and I now have her leg as a souvenir. Kidding! I really threatened to call her grandfather (my uncle). She continued to scream and carry on but went into her bed visibly afraid. Hell, I would be too. Her grandfather is a Republican and the last thing I would want to deal with at 8 PM is a cantankerous Republican. Anyway, she went to bed still crying about the damn story and so I told her that perhaps she would be able to defy biology and get to sleep without the story. And lo she did!
The next morning, I was up at 6 AM and I told her mother about what had occurred the evening before. She told me I handled it all very well as she would have picked her up by her ankles and tossed her into the snow. Or laughed. Whatever. I then left and went to the grocery store, Target and TJMaxx all by 9AM. When I finally got back home I looked like this:
True story.