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These decorative bugs hit me every once in a while. Personally, I blame Home and Garden. They put ideas in my head, man. And then, seduced by the glossy photos of spa-like bathrooms big enough to play football in and chandeliers hanging above the tub, I conveniently forget about the work involved and get caught up imagining that I too can host a formal dinner party for 20 in my bathroom.
And so it began.
Tony came home to find that I had gleefully removed absolutely everything from the bathroom and thrown it on the bed. He also found me hip deep in Kilz, wailing along to the radio and smearing primer on everything in sight.
He sighed, moved the toilet paper into the floor, and curled up on the bed to sleep between the shower curtain and a large pile of mostly expired cold medicine.
The second day, he came home to find me hip deep in the base coat color, still singing to the radio, still in relatively high spirits.
He opened the windows to ventilate the paint fumes, and long-jumped his way over the 900 boxes* of tampons that were scattered in front of the closet.
The third day he came home to find me faux finishing the top half of the bathroom walls with a whisk broom and the top coat glaze, not singing.
"How goes it?", he asked.
"I just remembered something really important", I said.
"What's that?"
"I really hate to paint"
"I could have told you that", he said.
The fourth day he came home to find me painting all of the cabinets. The radio was off. The house was silent. And I was morosely smearing paint on like I had finally accepted the fact that I would be doing this forever.
"Still painting?", he asked.
"It's like a death march," I told him. "A death march sponsored by Sherwin Williams".
The fifth day he came home to find me collapsed in the floor, beaten by the paint. Every now and then, I would work up enough energy to feebly raise my paint brush and randomly slap it up against the wainscoting on the bottom half of the wall.
"You're in the home stretch now", he said. "Although I've kinda gotten used to having the toilet plunger on the night stand. It's an easy way to turn off the alarm clock in the morning".
On the sixth day, I sealed all the edges around the tub and counter top. It was a nice break from the painting, but more difficult because my hand had permanently fused to the paint brush and I couldn't get my fingers to open up and let it go.
On the seventh day, I carried all of our toiletries back into the bathroom.** Tony was thrilled to get the floor space back from in front of his dresser, but a bit sad to see the convenient bedside toilet paper holder go. "Now I'll have to get up again when I need to blow my nose at night", he complained.
Finally, I called him in to look at the finished result.
"Ta-da!" I waved my arms around like Vanna White.
"Are we going to have to have dinner parties in here now?" he asked warily.
"After all this work? Absolutely! And play touch football too."
"You do realize that our bathroom is much smaller than those giant ones featured in the magazine, right?"
"I don't care", I said. "I've been painting every day for a week. People are going to appreciate it if we have to cram in here like performers in a clown car"***.
He rolled his eyes and went downstairs to watch tv.
I sighed. The boy has no appreciation for style. At least our dinner guests/football team will be impressed. Well, as soon as I can get my brush-shaped claw hand to send out invitations anyway.
*Apparently, I impulse buy.
**Even the expired cold medicine. Which in hindsight, probably should have just been thrown away, but I was on reduced mental capacity from a week of paint fumes, so I just brought them back in and put them away again.
3 comments:
Well, I for one can't wait to attend your bathroom dinner party.
Your writing is very Erma Bombeck. I like it!
It looks good! It was worth the 150years :)
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