The Case Against Me

Things are getting pretty dire here.  I may have passed straight through quirky and rushed full-on into “Notes on a Scandal” territory. This may be one of the dangers of not getting married. You start to become full-on insane. Not because of missing a man or what have you. But because there is no one else in the house going, hmmm maybe that’s not a good idea. No checks and balances against your taste or brilliant ideas. Just you in your house, listening to music and thinking, oh that wall could use a bit of color. Red? Orange? Blue? How about all three? But tasteful. It will be tastefully done yet unusual. Or, my hair seems kind of dry, what kind of deep conditioning treatment can I find in my very own kitchen? Eggs and olive oil! Of course! Very good for the hair!

Which is how you end up at the hardware store, idly spending a mint on custom mixed paint that looks nothing like the paint chips that you’ve been handed to pick out the colors. Oh, it is in the same color family, but where the colors on the chips have taken on a faded, nice patina by virtue of having been there since the store opened and taking on the oils of all the hands that have fondled them, the colors you will actually get in the can will make you exclaim things like, “Wow, cheetohs” and the favorite of the clerks, “That looks like a hooker’s lipstick!”. You will then trundle these, along with what should have been a slight wash of blue but is actually a chalky soul-less blue and what was supposed to be a deep rich brown which instead is cheap chocolate from christmas brown, to your apartment. The initial plan was to paint frames on the walls and fill them with photos. But idly, with no real purpose in mind, you pick up some masking tape and start blocking off a small section of the wall the in the hallway next to the door on the corner with the dining area. Within the box that you’ve blocked off, you place the tape in a staggered stripe fashion. Using the hooker red and the chalky blue, you fill in the block and then go make yourself a snack. Coming out of the kitchen, eating mango and drinking calamansi juice you happen to catch sight of the blue and red freak show on the wall. At that moment you fully realize, more than anytime before, that paint is rather permanent. And this may have been a bad idea.

But in for a penny… Later that night, after doing some research for a volunteer project, you google at-home hair treatments, as you’ve noticed a ton of split ends lately. So you find a recipe for egg and olive oil conditioner. That sound reasonable. Lots of fat in that, and didn’t the Romans use olive oil for cleaning themselves? The last bit of the recipe reads rinse well. Head off to the kitchen and mix up the recipe, which smells like mayonnaise or egg and while not unpleasant, isn’t the usual floral assault wave and so doesn’t particularly smell like a nice hair treatment. It is very runny and so you can’t quite figure out how to put it on. You try various methods, pouring it in your hands, pouring it directly on your head, etc etc. Eventually the cup of goop is empty, which may have more to do with the cat deciding it is delicious than your ability to put it on your head. The recipe then said to wrap your head in saran wrap and leave it set for ten minutes. This ends up taking a good ten minutes as sections of hair keep slipping out of the saran wrap so you have to go another round about your head to capture the renegade section. Eventually your head is almost white with saran wrap but all the hair seems to be contained. But not all the goop, as it is running down your face and neck and your cat is whining trying to get you to pick him up so he can continue eating.

Ten minutes go by and you rinse it out. After standing directly under the spray for five minutes, you figure it must be all rinsed out. So you wrap your head in a towel and head off to the foyer. Because while under the spray, you came up with the brilliant idea of writing, ‘You’re so money, baby, and you don’t even know it’ above and below the mirror in the entrance. You grab a pencil and start writing on the wall. Then you realize it is crooked as and you should have drawn a line first with the meter stick that you bought particularly for this exercise. So you go grab your eraser and your meter stick. Erasing a dark pencil line on a glossy white wall? Doesn’t work. So now the wall is smeared with black from the eraser and the marks are still there. Glass cleaner doesn’t take this off. Neither does vinegar and baking soda. Then you think, I’ll just paint a large frame around the mirror, which will cover up the marks and then write on top of that!

As you’re thinking this, standing in the foyer in your bare feet, your cat divebombs first your left then your right foot, biting as hard as possible to let you know his anger or boredom or that he’s finally completing his satanic ritual to fully transform to a devil. The tops of your feet start bleeding in what you imagine might be a decent rendition of the stigmata.

You use your meter stick to mark off a frame but due to the placement of the light switch, are unable to make it large enough to fully cover your brilliant quote idea. You opt to ignore this and deal with it later, concentrating on filling in the frame as it is getting late and you need to go to bed. However, you did not remember that the paintbrush was still reasonably full of water from the earlier box excursion, and so the paint starts running freely down the wall, past the masking tape barrier. With nothing else handy to take care of messes, you hike up your tshirt and use it as a rag and think to yourself, i should get a rag. Yet you continue painting, the paint keeps escaping the masking tape boundaries, and you keep thinking, I should get a rag. Then you notice that the paint is also hitting the newspaper (that you thankfully thought to put on the floor) in large quantity, which your cat has become fascinated with. Trying to pick up the cat with the non-painted hand, he fights back and gives a vicious swipe to your arm and earns a big blue splotch on his head for the effort. Eventually you get the frame filled in and the cat out of the foyer. Time for bed.

You take the towel off your head to go to bed and realize that there may actually not be enough water in the world that will adequately fill the recipe’s request to rinse well.

And that, you may have to start scouting for a marriage partner. If only to stop you from doing stupid things like this. And to read maps.

Tags: apartment, at-home beauty treatment, notes on a scandal, painting