Stuck on You

So clearly, Howard and I cannot be trusted to be alone together.

DS was away this weekend, and the weather threatened to housebound everyone. Weather folk everywhere warned of below-zero air temperatures and death-experience wind chills. I heard it all week: Don’t go out: it’s not safe. Find something to do indoors.

Everyone who read my last post knows that Howard and I don’t dare do anything indoors when we’re without DS. Clearly something happens to the air in our home that renders us incapable of logic, decision-making or sense. I wanted to take down the jungle gym in the basement to make room for more exercise equipment, but where to store it? Even the garage was too cold to attempt.

Ditto my desire to ‘freecycle’ the dresser, queen bed, train table and anything of Howard’s I could coax out of the house and on to the lawn. There would be no rain or snow, so the equipment would be ‘safe’ for garbage pickers to nab. But who would dare go trolling for freebies during Tundra Sunday? We needed more options. Painting was out—obviously. Cleaning was done, and anyway, I was not in the mood. I’m PMSing big time, and if I even lift a dust rag during these days, I start screaming. Must try something else.

In the end, Howard and I did our usual go-round of errands. We froze, and since we opted for sushi at lunch, we starved, but we got all the running done by 4pm on Saturday. Howard made stew, we watched a movie, and all was well.

Then suddenly it was 6pm, there was no DS to entertain us, and no chance of doing anything outdoors. What to do, what to do…..ah! I’ve got it! Remember that dumbass idea we had where we’d wax all the hair off of Howard’s body, even though we have no equipment and no knowledge of the process? Yeah! Let’s do that!

Sometime last summer, in a discussion that defies any attempt to translate out of Married CoupleSpeak, Howard and I decided to shave his back. It looked so good, we shaved his chest, and he went around all bare and proud until his pokey stubble stabbed me one night in bed and then the regrowth itched Howard so badly, he started looking like a cartoon dog with fleas.

We shaved again, and then again & again, wearing down the blade on his hair clippers, each time trying to get closer to the skin. I nicked him every time, and he bled every time. I was lucky enough that I never snagged anything ‘precious’, shall we say, but still, blood is blood, and anyway, the stupid stuff kept growing back.

We talked about sending him out for a professional ‘wax on/wax off’, but the only spas who do that are in BoysTown, in the city, and we worried about the exact meaning of ‘Full Monty with Surprise’. We toyed around with it a bit each time I mowed his chest, nightmares of “The Wall” and all form of silent-era Horror film flashing before me. Could we do something else? Well sure; we could Nair the poor man’s whole body, but we feared we might never get the smell out of the bathroom. We could do laser removal or electrolysis, but dang that hurts, and anyway, if ‘Buff Chest’ costs $240, what in heaven’s name would a de-seeding run? No, no. There had to be something more civilized than Rocky Horror to fix this.

Waxing it is. Howard and I dutifully strode our ignorant selves into Sally Beauty Supply, picked up the Microwave Waxing kit, an extra box of muslin strips and off we went. We got home, Howard de-shirted and I plopped the coffee mug-like wax container into the microwave. Thirty seconds on high, apply evenly to the skin, lay the muslin strip over, pull in opposite direction. Voila! No more hair, and no more shaving. Easy stuff, awesome results.

I guess we should have listened when the clerk at Sally Beauty tried to warn us. “You understand this hurts,” she said, her eyes on Howard. He nodded, eyeing a bottle of skin numbing solution. “Yes, I know.”

“No, listen,” she said, her voice emphatic. “This really, really hurts.”

Howard looked up from his topical Novocain. “Okay,” he said. The enthusiasm had drained, but the resolve remained. “We really want to try it.”

Now I can’t verify this, of course, but I’m pretty sure that woman is still laughing at us. I’m certain because I can virtually guarantee that she heard Howard screaming all the way from Wheaton.

We really did think we had everything under control. We were like the parents in Bill Cosby’s famous childbirth routine. We were intellectuals. When we want to know something, we read a book. Well, Howard and I were clearly uber-intellectuals this time, because we opted out of the book, the magazine, the pamphlet and even the internet. When it came right down to it, we consulted exactly two things: the 3-line directions on the wax mug and each other.

Lord, here comes the flood.

First of all, the substance in the mug is not wax so much as it is glue. Stringy, sticky impossible-to-regulate glue that sticks to everything. It took me a full 5 minutes to detach the stirring stick from the mug, and then I carried a violin-like bevy of strings across the table to Howard’s back. The strings dutifully followed gravity, settling in Howard’s beard, hair and neck. I tried to whack them away, and now one of the cats has a honey-colored beauty mark on his ear. I worried for a moment he’d try to clean it off and then his paw would affix to his head, rendering him 3-legged. Luckily it landed on the fat cat who has decided he likes it.

I ladled the wax down on Howard, careful not to overload the area. I pressed the muslin in, rubbed it exactly the way Line #2 instructed me, and then I paused. How long to leave the wax on? If it’s too quick, it won’t pull up the hair. If I wait too long, the whole thing will fuse to Howard’s back and he’ll have a 3-D tattoo flapping up from beneath his shirt collar. I waited about a minute and then decided to take the plunge. I grabbed the end of the muslin and yanked.

Ok, oops! Probably should have told Howard I was going to do that.

Howard flinched, tensed, went into cardiac arrest, and then said in his characteristic calm. “Wow. That hurts.” He paused, gulped for air and then turned back toward me. “How does it look?”

I eyed the spot. “It looks great,” I admitted. “Really nice.”

I could tell Howard was wishing for another answer. “How many more strips do you think you’ll need to do my whole back?”

I did a quick geometry problem and added a few to cover myself. “Maybe 12,” I said. “At the most.”

“Okay, keep going.”

Raging Morons Take Two

I never got a clean strip after that. Plus, I ignored Line 3 of the directions, which told me most firmly NOT to wax over an area that had been previously waxed. In trying for a smooth finish, I wound up layering wax upon wax upon matted back hair until Howard’s midsection was covered in praline-like blobs. I did 2 or 3 more strips before Howard remembered that we’d forgotten to get a skin numbing salve. It was too late to go out now, so Howard opted to self-medicate and brought out his 18-year old scotch.

Good call. If Howard had a little, he’d mind the pain less. If he had a little more, I’d get a contact high and I could relax a bit. And if things got really out of hand, we could pour it on to his now bleeding back in hopes of staving off an infection.

We worked about 8 strips and half his back before we gave up. I couldn’t find a clean spot to land a strip, Howard was in a perpetual state of goose bump and he was tipsy enough that he wouldn’t hold still. I had switched to latex gloves after 2 pairs of my fingers fused together and no amount of scrubbing would undo them.

Glue on my gloves, glue on the table, and now I’m not sure that Howard can get up off the chair. I closed everything up and sent him to the shower. “Put the water on as hot as you can stand it. Try to melt the wax off.”

Howard pelted himself with too-hot water until his legs blistered, but the pralines remained. We wound up scrubbing his back with a pumice stone. We got a bunch off, but he still stuck to his t-shirt, and I’m pretty sure he got a second-degree burn from the water.

I took a look this morning, and it’s just awful. He looks like one of those stray dogs in mid-season, whose part-shedding, part-dogfight-torn coat is just hanging off of him. I looked up the spas again and found a few ‘instructional videos’ on how to wax properly. They were all women ‘models’, and there wasn’t anything more complicated than a leg wax, but everyone appeared calm. I kept my eyes on the lady getting leg waxed and she didn’t even blink when the muslin came off.

Howard and I talked it through, as intellectuals will do, and decided to try it again. I would attempt my newly honed skills, we would return to Sally for numbing solution, and a wax remover, and we would prevail.

Seriously Stupid III: The Rip Tide

Once again, the first strip yielded perfect results. I numbed the skin, slid the wax over the area and pulled (with warning!), revealing a clean, clear space. But then the pralines came back, and then DS came home, and every time I would pull a strip, DS would turn away from his game to ask me, “Mommy, is Rosen all right?” After the third post-DS strip, when he asked me, “Mommy, what are you doing to Rosen?” I gave up. Wax off, no coda, el fin.

Oh, and of course we forgot to get the wax remover, so Howard took a bath this time, careful not to overfill the tub, so in case he got stuck to the bottom, he wouldn’t drown.

Howard insists he’s glad of the experience, and suggested that professional equipment is better than the at-home variety. Likely, and of course they’re all licensed, but still, my god! It’s not surgery (though I’m sure it felt like it to Howard). It’s wax and hair. It’s simple physics. An object at rest remains at rest unless disturbed by some external sticky stuff. Seriously, how could this have gone so wrong?

Coulda been the whisky….Maybe, but where’s my excuse? Howard behaved like a girl in this, and I mean that in the very best sense. He could have shrieked and yelled and cursed (as I was), and rolled around in the pain. But he didn’t. He barely lauded more than the occasional, “mother of god!” and I’m pretty sure there was only one four-letter expletive all night, and that was during the pumice-me-the-moon phase. He stood up to the pain and then he sat down and let me do it to him again today. I applaud his patience, his resolve, and his Zen.

I also made him an appointment with the BoysTown Wax Capades. After all, the little bits I see are sexy, and I want to see him when it’s all done right. When it comes to doing something like this, Howard needs a pro, at least the first time. He has strict instructions to watch how the Muslin Fairy layers, ladles and rips his chest, so I can do the same, Heterosexual Style, after he gets home.

A the W(axing and Wailing)

Painted (Ma)Lady

Q: How many people does it take to paint a bathroom?
A: As many as you like, so long as none of them are me.

DS spent last week in Florida with his nanny and her husband. He was gone for 7 days, and I needed something distract myself for a full week. I was on my last week of break from school, and I was working every day, so the project had to be simple, swift, and productive. I talked it over with Howard, and we opted to paint the bathroom. It’s small, it’s enclosed, so there’s less chance of the mess spilling over into other rooms, and since we use it every day, there was added motivation to finish the project on time.

Since we had the time, I decided that it might be fun to be a little daring. Oh, the hubris of the untalented. I have no artistic talent. None. I admire artistic things, but from a safe and outsider’s distance. Painting, music, dance, and even theater are all delights to me, but only as a spectator. I know this about myself, yet I forgot all about it when I opted to sponge-paint my bathroom.

Or, at least, I remembered long enough to call my brother, who is an artist and who does have talents for color and style. Howard and I got him on the phone on December 30, just a few hours after DS had boarded a plane to Tampa. We directed my brother to the paint palette site and showed him the colors we’d chosen. After a few ‘ewwww!’ responses from him, he suggested a 3-color combination that appeared to be just shy of Utterly Insane. Where Howard and I had picked Whispered Peach, Brother opted for Blood Orange, paired with Rhubarb and Vanilla Milkshake. Purple, Orange and Sugared White. Dear God.

But, he is an artist and I am not. I trusted the artist and committed to try. We loaded up with supplies and a full gallon of the Blood Orange. We brushed the cut in and then rolled the first coat, and when we were done, I wasn’t sure whether I was standing in the center of a volcano or had been relocated to Middle Earth. The once gray-green white vanished beneath Bursting Sunset, and the color was so vivid and bright that it reflected all the way down the steps and in to the living room. I gulped away my nerves and Howard comforted me in a voice that had only slightly less tremor than my own. Don’t worry. This is just the base coat. It’ll be covered with white and purple. Excuse me. Rhubarb.

When it came time to sponge the Milkshake over the Inferno, the effort seemed suddenly too large, and we opted to do ragging instead. Ragging involves clumping up some piece of cloth (in this case, Howard’s undershirts), dipping it into the paint tray and then stamping it all over the walls. The ragging leaves a more interesting mark than the sponge, and so we tore up a group of shirts and set to work. This was Monday night, New Year’s Eve.

When we were finished, the Blood Orange had given way to Melting Dreamsicle. The orange, while muted, was still there, curdling the walls in every child’s ice cream nightmare. The echoing down the hall had dimmed, but the white looked sloppy on top of the orange, and there were now smudges of both paints on the trim. The drop cloth had torn and there was a dragon-shaped stain next to the tub. I called my brother, concern seeping through my forced laughter. “It’s in the blending,’ he assured me. “And ragging is nicer than sponging. I figured you would like that better.”

Well, ‘better’ is a relative term. It was ‘better’ than feeling like I was showing in utero, but I was far from satisfied. But commitment is commitment, and we still the Rhubarb. One more coat to go.

Brother had suggested we build the Rhubarb in stalk-like extensions from the floor to ceiling. I couldn’t figure out how to make a stalk with a bunched up underwear clump, and anyway, there was still way too much orange showing. I opted for full coverage, banging the rag against the walls to blot out the orange and mix with the white. Howard, on the other side of the bathroom, gave the Stalk idea its full due and make literal purple stripes up and down the walls.

Once completed with the Rhubarb and the bathroom “finished”, I could barely keep from crying. The purple clashed with the orange, the white had all but vanished, and we had Rhubarb on the stepladder, the sink and dripping down the shower stall. I knew I could never make it a full year with my bathroom in such a state. I called Brother.

On his instructions, we diluted the remaining Milkshake 2:1 with water and then rolled it over the whole wall. It would be like a glaze, he said. It would tone everything down and even the color out.

Wednesday afternoon, with hope and paint supplies waning, we diluted the white, loaded up our rollers and set to work. Apparently my talents for stirring do not extend to paint, because the dilution left the combination runny, and no amount of squeezing the roller would fix it. Howard gave up rolling and took to mopping up the puddles. About halfway through, I looked back at our work and tossed my roller down. “It looks like we’re painting over wallpaper,” I said. Howard agreed. It was a disaster.

Sadly, our work had left its mark in places not intended. Stray bits of Blood Orange had made its way past the painter’s tape and on to the ceiling. Howard had attempted to sponge off some of it, but that only managed to widen the stains. I knew that we’d have to do the ceiling anyway. Today was not that day for sure, and so while the stains rankled me, they would have to remain.

Thursday night, 5 days after our little project began, Howard bought home cans of primer. We figured, correctly, that no amount of any color would dilute the Citrus Explosion growing on the walls, and so we would simply start over. I thought, briefly, that perhaps painting the walls white would be enough. We could stop there, and just leave it until it was time to paint again, post-new bathroom.

Ah, but The Project That Will Never End had other ideas. We needed 2 coats of primer to get the blood and the rhubarb off the walls. Plus, the Stark White of the primer threw me back to every cheap rental I’d ever lived in, where every wall was White, Oh So White, and the trim hinted at way too many coats of ‘just slap it on before the next move-in’. I couldn’t leave it.

Friday night, after Primer coat #2 went up, we drove out to Lowe’s and picked up another gaggle of chips. We settled Saturday morning on Whispered Peach, a color remarkable close to the original color we’d chosen before the Artist’s Hangover took to our walls. We bought 2 gallons, new rollers, and brushes specifically designed for latex paint. Our trim and cut-in work was awful-there were brush marks everywhere, and no amount of paint-loading or brush-scraping seemed to fix it. We ‘invested’ in good brushes, complete with their own post-project holders, hoping that this, at least, would solve one of our myriad problems.

Nope.

The Peach went on lovely, subtly and smooth. Howard and I have no talent at this, though, and so the ceiling got its new stains of muted dawn to duel with the fruit salad. I did the cut-in work twice, the second time with a wedged sponge, and still the brush marks remained. By now, on Saturday morning, with DS due to return the following night and now SIX days into what should have been a 2-day project, I couldn’t focus on the pretty.

We got 2 coats up by Sunday morning, and then set about cleaning up the biggest spills. Howard replaced the bathroom mirror and then dug holes into the wall trying to put up our new medicine chest. While he cursed his way through anchors and drywall, I grabbed hold of a tape end and pulled. And that’s when I discovered that paint is a lot like nail polish. If you have 2 or 3 coats, you need acetone to take it off. If, however, you have 7, all you need to do is pluck off a corner and the whole nail peels off without effort.

Chips, chunks and slabs of pale orange peeled off with the tape, sometimes removing every coat we’d layered in the last week and showing the hospital gray-green white that the room had been Before. Howard used a box cutter on the niche areas, and I did my best to pull straight and even, but still, there are holes in the paint, and all of them are in obvious, can’t-hide-this-mess places.

The ceiling is a smudged orange, and somehow, the Blood color managed to seep up under the tape, so that there is a thin line of Raging Sunset along the lip of the ceiling in half the room. The tub looks like a cauldron of stewed vegetables and the shower stall is nothing short of melting-vegetable surrealism. After the last tape clump had been stuffed into the trash, I stood at the doorway entrance and shook my head. “We have destroyed this room,” I told Howard. “Yes,” he replied, “We have.”

I admit that I did distract myself while DS was gone. And with respect to the Universe, this is nothing. We’re not starving to death. Our home hasn’t been burned by the Junta, and even my Christmas indiscretion matters little at the macro level. We’re healthy, we’re all back together, and I got it done in time to delve into Principles of Financial Accounting, which started today.

Howard took a bigger approach, noting that we learned priceless lessons. We are plain, simple people when it comes to decoration. The blood-rhubarb-milkshake would have worked with someone talented who had hours to rag and sponge the walls Just So, but that is not us. We should have stuck with the creamy Hint O’Color that we’d chosen originally and left it at that. And in the mean time, we chose a small, self-enclosed room to showcase our fubar. We didn’t pain the kitchen, none of the cats fainted from the fumes, and now, more or less, it’s over.

DS did recognize all the changes, and spent quite a bit of time in the bathroom cataloging what was new. That helped, but more to recognize that he was aware of the changes, something he wouldn’t have noticed a year ago. I’m glad for that, though I would have preferred to discover this by adding new pillows to the sofa, rather than drop $300 on paint that wound up covered, and then stripped off, in this heinous attempt at innovation.

I shuddered my way through my morning routine today, my eyes constantly darting to the orange smears and the color-spattered floor. We will have to repair the torn paint section—sometime. Right now, I have resolved only to bear it until I have the time and wherewithal to fix it. As I can’t bear the idea of being away from DS for even a day, it seems I’ll be dealing with my Tangerine Dream for quite a while. If it gets too serious, I can always relocate my shampoo to the basement and shower there. It’s cold and small and inconvenient, but at least everything matches, and there’s no paint on the floor.

A the L(onging for “Before”)