November Spawned a Monster

I’m supposedly really smart. You know, on paper and stuff. And while I can say that I have managed to wing my way through life with a relative degree of competence, I need to inform you, in the immortal words of Schnozz, that being supposedly really smart isn’t worth as much as you might think. In fact, in most cases, it’s worth absolutely positively nothing, and most days, like today, I actually wonder if I am in some way severely mentally challenged, and that my medical file had been mixed up with someone else’s at birth, because God, just GOD, I am just so… unevolved. Stunted. Dumb.

And it’s just…well, there are days that I can just walk right by that big box of Target wine in the refrigerator, and there are days that I think that four bottles’ worth of cheap wine in a box just isn’t enough.

My actual work day was ridiculous in that typical workday ridiculousness we all deal with. There were miscommunications, broken-down machinery, non-stop phone calls, a five-minute period where no fewer than seven people made time-consuming demands on an already-packed timeframe, and a dog that wouldn’t stop farting. I brought the dog to work with me, as I always do when my husband is gone, and today she ate everything in sight, including three blobs of pre-chewed gum she found in the grass and an entire pile of newspapers next to my desk and then she proceeded to fart fart FART for nine consecutive hours, resulting in an embarrassing cloud of dog fart stench. I suppose I should be thankful she didn’t snatch up a juicy condom again, but for crying out loud, someone else’s chewing gum again. And dog farts are gross.

God I was just so ignorantly happy to be going home when the moment finally arrived. And then I got into the garage, and a strange twist of completely bizarre and stupid motions rendered a full can of paint emptied on the floor of the garage in the end closest to the house and oh God, there was just PAINT. PAINT EVERYWHERE. And I just didn’t even think, I just started – oh God – just cleaning up the paint with my bare hands in large sweeping scooping motions like I had somehow replaced my regular hands with flexible ladels – spatulas, if you will. I was scooping it up like pudding and dribbling it back into the can, my hands, rings and arms covered in white like some kind of fool.

And then I thought it would be brilliant, just BRILLIANT, if I brought the garden hose inside the garage and started, you know, hosing it all down, sending giant, wild streaks of white paint all over the garage in this big white potent BLOB streaming down to the paver driveway and all over the garage, and all over…electrical supplies. Electrical supplies that were plugged in, which presented an entirely new set of electrocutionary potential, but more importantly, there was white paint everywhere. Everywhere! Like some kind of giant white …paint monster threw up all over the garage.

And oddly, it gets worse. I was wearing my work clothes, and not just any work clothes, I was wearing my favorite work clothes, with the comfy-yet-fancy black pants and cute little shirt and oh, there was paint all over me, and I had to act fast – FAST! – while it was still wet. And I decided to…to… ugh…power wash myself with the water pressure of the hose right then and there. Yeah. I was going to power wash my pants while I was still wearing them. In the garage. Which I totally did with such wild fervor, it was as if I’d just stepped out of a hazmat site.

Odd segue, but my neighbor across the street is…a strong woman, I suppose is a nice way of saying it, and if I may say so, she’s manlier than my husband. A stocky woman in her early 40s, she sports a mullet, drives a gigantic Ford F150, regularly uses power tools and drives a truck for a living, in addition to delivering for FedEx part-time. And her nature is…blunt, to say the least. But I have no business making fun of her, as I am a Darwinian failure who should not procreate, as this will demonstrate.

She busted me with the hose down my pants – my whole body, really – while I was trying to power wash the white paint off of them, the thick glue-like streaks dribbling into the driveway and street. And she wasn’t impressed, she who could power tool me into oblivion.

“Um, what are you doing?” She was incredulous. I made some lame attempt at explaining that I spilled paint, you see, white paint, and I was simply trying to rinse!

“If you keep rinsing, you are going to PAINT YOUR DRIVEWAY WHITE. STOP. STOP, OH MY GOD, THIS IS NOT SMART. But wait…is the hose in your pants? What the hell are you doing?” Her tone was so snotty, I wanted to punch her.

It totally was the hose in my pants, in fact. I then tried to explain the whole thing, and I said things like, “yes, you’re right, I’m reevaluating my paint-removal strategy” and ” I’m really taking a hard look at the potential solutions and powerwashing my pants” like applying corporate-speak would change anything, or if I used words like “proactive” I could distract her from the horror laid out before us. (I actually said these things. Just kill me now.)

And yet I kept digging. I finished up as best I could and then – to stop gawking truck drivers from asking me questions – I closed the garage door. And then I took off my pants and put them in the washing machine inside. After I fired up the machine, I came back out into the garage in my (oh my God) thong, and finished picking stuff up and tried to sandpaper the paint off the floor, when I realized hey! I need the hose! Which is right outside the garage! And so I opened the garage door, you know, to get the hose! And I left it open, and stood in the blaring white of the garage, happily hosing down the final bits of the paint, listening to the neighbors across the street chattering away, and looking up only when my other neighbor walked by with her dog.

“Hi!” I said brightly, trying to conceal the paint, so she wouldn’t think I was polluting. You know, with the paint.

“Uh, hi.” Her head was kind of down, and it was strangely awkward. This really isn’t that unusual, for she’s not that friendly, and I didn’t think anything of it until I realized I wasn’t wearing any pants. Let me say that again: I wasn’t wearing any pants. And in fact, I was sporting a navy polka-dotted thong and a T-shirt, and not much else. I wasn’t wearing any freaking pants in a brightly lit garage on a dark night in front of all of my neighbors and just…well, after all that, what can I really say? However, I am not sure, really, that she saw the pantlessness, because she’s not that observant, and I was also behind the car for part of the time, as the picture illustrates. And maybe the other neighbors thought I was in a bathing suit? Maybe? It is warm here, you know.

(I tend to think of the garage as an extension of our house, hence the pantlessness, I can only guess. I yell too much in there, swear a lot and talk to myself, forgetting that people can see me.)

It’s all so awful. So awful. So awful that I’m really stretching to find it funny, because the humiliation factor is through the roof. I have to live with these people, and not only did I flash my boobs to one of my neighbors already, but tonight I wasn’t wearing any PANTS and I painted the whole neighborhood white. And the worst part? It’s not even the pantlessness that bothers me, it’s the inane conversation with the neigbor, who clearly thinks I am stunted and a colossal idiot. Oh God, and the thick white blobs of paint all over the driveway and the frogs, I’ve killed SO MANY FROGS with that paint, I’m sure. Tomorrow, the carcasses will pop up everywhere, without a doubt.

So really, I am not smart, just not smart at all. 12 more hours until A. gets back, and please, just please, it cannot come soon enough, because I am incapable of taking care of myself.

Edited to add: Say what you will about the powerwashing efforts but my pants are PAINT-FREE, SUCKERS!

And after all that, it’s not even clean, but at least it’s not all over the neighborhood.

*Morrissey

42 comments November 16th, 2006