November Spawned a Monster
November 16th, 2006
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
Entry Filed under: Nuttin'
42 Comments Add your own
1. Sarcomical | November 16th, 2006 at 8:51 pm
oh my good lord. that was GREAT!
i mean, great for me.
not so great for you.
2. carol | November 16th, 2006 at 8:57 pm
Does this kind of stuff follow you around???? You cease to amaze me! I’m still laughing.
3. Carolyn J. | November 16th, 2006 at 9:29 pm
Oh, you are making this shit up! Come on now!
4. jonniker | November 16th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
Carolyn, I assure you, I am not. I wish, oh, how I fucking WISH. I just start these things without thinking, and I completely, and I mean COMPLETELY, lack any sort of follow-through-type thinking in crisis situations. I just do, and realize only later what an ass I’ve been.
This one is heartbreakingly ridiculous, even to me. Like, my God, am I that dumb? Seriously? The answer, apparently, is yes.
5. Orange Peacock | November 16th, 2006 at 9:57 pm
Oh good lord, woman! I think I’m going to start scouting around for four-leaved clovers to send you. Nobody should accumulate that much bad luck! Wow!
6. -R- | November 16th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
At least it didn’t get all over the car! Right? Tell me you didn’t paint the car.
The horror of being caught in your underwear! And a thong, nonetheless! Oh, man.
7. Daily Tragedies | November 16th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Wow. Just wow. And I thought it was bad when I accidentally showed my sort-of boss (male, of course) a picture of my underwear. But you? You out-did yourself.
8. Suebob | November 16th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
Laughing so hard that I hurt myself.
Laughing so hard the dog became concerned about me.
O my god laughing, laughing.
You are the funniest woman alive.
Thank you.
9. Beth | November 17th, 2006 at 3:48 am
Two things going through my head as I read your post:
1. Lucy! You got some ‘splaining to do…
2. “But do they own or rent??”
;^)
10. aly | November 17th, 2006 at 5:27 am
i know you dont find that story funny yet… but omg, i think i find it funny enough for the both of us.
at least sunny is not sporting any white spots at the moment?
11. Nancy | November 17th, 2006 at 6:32 am
Oh my. I came over from Suebob’s (Linkateria) and I’m alternately shaking my head in sympathy and laughing my ass off. I am sorry this had to happen, but… BWAHAHAHAHAHA! So well told, I could just picture it all happening!
Except I didn’t look when you were just wearing your thong. I do have that thread of decency.
12. TwoBusy | November 17th, 2006 at 6:56 am
If you were a horse, I’d put you down.
13. Claire | November 17th, 2006 at 7:05 am
oh jonniker, i had flashes of panic and queasiness just reading this. i don’t know what i would have done if i had been in your shoes. you poor thing. hopefully Adam is understanding? and won’t be all ‘you ruined the house’ when he comes back?
cause that would be the f-ing cherry on top, wouldn’t it.
you might want to get some scrapers and paint thinner/remover to get the rest of it up.
gah. i’m feeling uncomfortable for you.
14. Chase | November 17th, 2006 at 7:13 am
Ya know, I’m actually impressed. In my 12 years of being a painter, I’ve never once made such a mes…..oh, wait. That’s a lie. Of course, I CAN’T honestly say I’ve stood anywhere with a hose in my pants while killing all the neighborhood woodland creatures.
Still. Impressed.
(here via Suebob)
15. Christine | November 17th, 2006 at 7:26 am
I am ashamed to say that I could see myself doing the very exact same thing. *sigh*
But, let’s move together and be neighbors. I swear I will never be snotty to you about your interesting paint removal techniques, so long as you aren’t judgmental of the screaming woman I turn into once monthly.
16. Heather B. | November 17th, 2006 at 7:29 am
You are my new favorite person.
That was classic.
17. Lawyerish | November 17th, 2006 at 7:34 am
Now that I’ve met you, I have an even harder time visualizing this level of clumsiness. You seemed so capable of maintaining control over your motor functions in person. And yet…
At first as i read this, I thought, as someone else did above, that it had to be exaggerated. Just had to be. But then I realized, no. She wouldn’t do that. She speaketh the truth.
So THEN, I started wondering if maybe — just maybe — I am so clumsy and so accustomed to my own clumsiness that this kind of thing happens to me EVERY DAY, but I don’t write about it because for me it is just life, just…normalcy. And, OH GOD, I think I might be right.
18. jonniker | November 17th, 2006 at 7:49 am
The best part of this whole thing is that Adam told me later, when I recounted the whole thing to his extreme horror, that I was just supposed to LET IT DRY, and we could scrape it up later. But there was honestly just TOO MUCH PAINT.
Also, Lawyerish, I’m chuckling that you thought I was in full control of my faculties. I can be, and usually am, except when I’m not. And strangely, if I’m really comfortable around someone, I am usually at my most together. Which, in a strange sort of way, is the opposite of how should be, isn’t it?
Christine, I AM GLAD. Because really, this whole thing came about due to the massive lapse in judgment of cleaning up the paint with my freaking HANDS. If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have needed water from the hose, and Iwouldn’t have even started the whole process.
HOWEVER, I feel oddly compelled to let y’all know that if you have a hose with really excellent water pressure, like with one of those attachments that you squeeze? It really does get most of this shit up. My life would have been a frillion times harder, and my pants surely ruined, if not for the glorious garden hose.
19. jes | November 17th, 2006 at 7:51 am
Is it odd that I was trying to imagine you in your garage at night in a polka-dotted thong? I mean, you painted (ha!) the picture so well – it was hard not to.
And while I was thinking about it? I was wondering what your hair looked like. I imagined that you had perfect hair, because Lawyerish said so.
Like, why was I trying to picture you there with the hose and the paint and the thong and the HAIR?
20. Nancy | November 17th, 2006 at 8:49 am
Whoa. also: Dude. That is stunningly awesome. Paint! No pants! Powerhosing! At least you got um, proactive. In the face of colassal mess-making disasters, I usually take the ostrich in the sand approach, i.e. hello newspaper! meet spill! bye-bye!
21. Jen W. | November 17th, 2006 at 10:13 am
The best: “I’m reevaluating my paint removal strategies.” That KILLED me.
22. Meepers | November 17th, 2006 at 11:47 am
Despite the vast amounts of humiliation (you) and potential misery (dead frogs) that story holds, all I could do was laugh, wipe my eyes, and COMPLETELY IMAGINE IT HAPPENING TO ME. Because, yes, I do have that sort of neighbor and they would probably laugh at me and tell me how thongs are repressive or something. While mocking my lack of fine motor skills.
23. Amanda | November 17th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
A positively priceless post. Thanks for sharing the insanity.
24. Lucy | November 17th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Man, that was great. You made a thing of beauty out of an insane mess…
25. Danell | November 17th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
I’m so sorry, but someone with hair as glorious as yours should be able to wrestle naked in jello in the front yard and not feel anything other than superior to someone with a MULLET.
26. whoorl | November 17th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
I don’t even know where to begin.
27. hollywoodgirl | November 17th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
Honey, you should not stay alone. You should always have a grownup with you.
28. kara marie | November 18th, 2006 at 6:08 am
But, hey! You got the paint out of your pants! As an artist, a painter, I know how incredibly tricky and important that is. Congratulations!
29. Schnozz | November 18th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
Personally, I prefer to think of it this way: We do not excel at activities that are BENEATH US. We genius-type people are highly evolved machines, designed to do only one thing (think rapidly and frivolously) and do it well. We aren’t some shoddy Jack-of-all-trades device, like the hot-pink kind you’d find at Wal-Mart that will play mp3s and CDs and also serves as a GPS, a toaster, and a towel hook. No. We were designed to do one thing. We are sleek, specialized, elite. We are dainty and slightly overpriced, but oh so pretty and quite the status symbol.
We do not, however, clean up paint. We do not. Is it any wonder that we do it poorly? Would you wipe up paint with a $10,304 espresso machine? Would you wipe up paint with a $26,995 digital camera (and yes, both of these do exist)? No. You would not.
Thus, you would not wipe up paint with the hands of a sort of genius-type person, either. Those hands were not made to clean up paint. They were, in fact, not made to do much of anything, other than perhaps gently caress an ergonomic keyboard. Which is precisely my point: your hands are for all practical purposes ornamental, like the headlight decals on a lightning-fast racing machine. Is it any coincidence that no one drives a stock car to the grocery store to pick up some milk? HMMM?
You just have to forgive yourself. It wasn’t meant to be. No one gets mad at the Hope Diamond for not DOING anything. It isn’t supposed to do anything. It certainly has no intention of filing tax forms or navigating the mall. It exists to look pretty. Just like you exist to think pretty.
And you think very, very pretty. Therefore, your success rate is 100 percent. When put to the appropriate task, the Hope Diamond cannot fail, and neither can you.
Now if someone would just explain this to the rest of the world … the tacky, unenlightened, embarrassing masses that INSIST on trying to use you for household chores. Someday the harsh unfairness of it all will be recognized, and a museum will be built to house us, so all can come and admire our digitized output as we lounge in big fluffy pillows and type our thoughts on golden laptops.
Until then … you know. Hang in there.
30. Alexa | November 19th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
What Schnozz said. It has to be true, because otherwise we are in such trouble.
And, for what it’s worth (probably very little) I would totally have tried to scoop the paint up with my hands as well.
31. Yez | November 19th, 2006 at 6:25 pm
Yay! I’m always a fan of pants stuffed with a hose, although I admit that some are best viewed from a distance (or in print, in this case). Yet where else can I find hose-trou and whitewashed frogs, never mind trash-talkin’ thong-wearin’ nighttime-garage-tableau-in’ Northerners?!
Don’t worry – many Mensans are also members of Densa :>
32. LCA | November 20th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
Every time I read this, I laugh harder.
33. Arielle | November 20th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
That was good stuff (to read) probly not to endure though. This blog rocks!
34. Robin | November 28th, 2006 at 3:46 am
I just about fell off of my chair laughing, what with reading about the phone melting in the oven and the scooping up of paint with hands. And I am totally with you, I was laughing in a very very empathetic way, because it could’ve been me.
35. fin | December 13th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
I love your bloggy!
36. Mommy off the Record | December 13th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
Oh my goodness. I know it’s not nice to laugh in the face of such disaster, but I am laughing my ass off right now. Or perhaps I should say I’m rolling on the floor laughing.
Congrats on your ROFL Award. Well-deserved. This is my favorite post so far!
37. Jonniker. » Glass H&hellip | March 31st, 2008 at 6:22 pm
[...] knows better is screeching, “No! NO THIS WILL NOT WORK.” And yet, I press on. Remember the paint incident, wherein I ended up pantless in my garage? Yes. Like [...]
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