Many of you, my loyal readers, may be wondering why there's been no new essay in the last two weeks. Goddess, you say, it's not like you have a job to go to anymore. You can write essays all day and night if you so desire. So why haven't you updated the site, you lazy cow?
All those kind words and thoughts are well appreciated, my friends, and it's true that I have far more time now that I did before the layoff. I can't deny that. But what I've found is that I am extremely good at killing said time. The most effective ways to kill time, for me, include my TV in one way or another.
I got Dave a Tivo for Christmas and we've been Tivo'ing (yes, it's a verb) lots of fabulous stuff to watch, assuming your definition of fabulous is the same as ours, which is almost certainly is not. Being the bad-movie sluts that we are, Dave and I have barreled through two full-length Thunderbirds movies ("F.A.B, Dad!"), "Hercules in New York" (Schwarzenegger when he was still Arnold Strang and couldn't be understood on a bet), a film done entirely in Esperanto (we only got through about 5 minutes of it because it also starred William Shatner) and many others too painful to mention here. Lest you think I only use Tivo, zombie-like, to numb the pain of my employer's rejection, I've also been catching up on midnight reruns of Bill Nye the Science Guy.
Hey, I'm unemployed here. I could be watching Passions, ok? At least I'm trying to better myself.
But I don't only use the television for passive watching purposes. Oh no. I'm also an active consumer of the physical TV, via a wonderful little time killer called PlayStation2 and a game called Kingdom Hearts. If you don't have PlayStation2 yet, I heartily endorse it. Unless you're fond of your thumbs, in which case you may want to rethink the purchase because I guarantee you that you'll have very sore thumbs after playing Kingdom Hearts for 6 hours straight. Several days in a row.
OK, a week. But it's a fantastic game!
So, other than rotting my brain with bad movies and getting carpal tunnel syndrome from video games, what have I actually accomplished since the layoff, you ask? Well, I'm glad you asked, because today we're going to play a little game I like to call "The Nature of the Universe."
There's only one question for the big jackpot and here it is: What is the most destructive force in the universe?
Think hard now. No pressure... just relax... the answer will come to you... and... time's up. How much did you risk? Ooooo... all of it. I'm sorry... the correct answer is...
The most destructive force in the universe is a woman with too much time on her hands.
And I am that woman.
With all this newfound time and a newly rekindled relationship with coffee (oh, how I love thee, caffeine) I've become a woman with projects. Dear coffee allows me to do 12 impossible things before breakfast and kills my appetite so I don't actually want any breakfast (which allows me more time to do the impossible things - see how that works?).
A partial (note the partial) list of tasks accomplished in the last 3 weeks includes the following: I have spent several Wednesday mornings driving all over Fremont going to 5 different stores for their weekly specials. I have hung two sets of Levelors, curtain rods and curtains in rooms that nobody but me ever sees. I have re-organized my home office. I have done our taxes. I have baked bread using both yeast from packages and wild yeast in the air (the packaged yeast made better bread by a long shot, but it was a good experiment). I have cleaned out my closet and drawers and brought clothes to the Salvation Army. I have vacuumed until the floor itself begged for mercy. I've read four books. I've gotten my hair cut and colored. I've sold $120 worth of used books and videos through Amazon. I've taken the dog for numerous walks. I've worked out to a satantic but very effective workout video called Walk Away the Pounds. I don't know how much I've walked away, but I can tell you that my thighs are killing me.
But right now? Right now, my most ambitious project is underway, and I'm not at all certain about the outcome. You see, at the moment, the half bathroom in my two and a half bathroom house is completely unusable. And it all started with a toilet paper holder.
This is what I'm talking about when I say that the most destructive force in the universe is a woman with too much time on her hands. Because until this weekend the bathroom was usable. A little plain, but usable. And when Dave offered to replace the toilet paper holder because the old one looked crummy and was falling off the wall, I took him up on it. I went out to Lowe's, bought a new paper holder, handed it over and he replaced it.
It was while he was painting over the spackle on the wall that the muse came over me. The muse that I should totally stop listening to because she doesn't know what she's talking about half the time. The muse that tells me things like, "Hey - you know, this bathroom was supposed to have a safari theme. And you have some pictures from your safari on the walls, but the bathroom is really pretty boring. You know what you could do, don't you? You could PAINT!"
I hate that muse bitch.
Because you know I couldn't just paint the walls a nice light tan and leave it at that, right? I mean, that's where the idea starts, but it never just ends there. I began with the concept of adding a little color, and then moved on to this whole idea of painting the ceiling with vines and things to look like a jungle canopy. Which would be great if I could paint such a thing. But anyone who has ever seen me try to draw knows that there's no way on earth I could paint a jungle canopy on the ceiling of my bathroom. It's a ridiculous notion, which I realized the next day while driving to Safeway for the weekly specials.
But! What if I painted the ceiling green and then staple-gunned actual fake greenery up there for a lush three-dimensional effect?! That'd be great!
On paper it sounds really bad. And I'm not sure that in reality it won't be really bad, but I'm taking my chances. And Dave is actually going with me on this idea, either because it's not as bad an idea as it sounds or because my coffee fueled insanity has frightened him into complacency. But I didn't stop there, of course. Because if you turn your bathroom ceiling into Tarzan's playground, you can't just stop there. Oh no. You have to go whole hog and paint the doorframe and the cabinets in leopard print. Right? Don't you?
Maybe it's just me.
Which leads us to why the bathroom is unusable at this moment in time. It's a small bathroom. That's a lot of paint. And right now it stinks to high heaven of paint fumes in there. So now I have a half-finished sort-of-safari-themed bathroom that I can't go into because if I do, I come out so high I think I'm Jackie Kennedy. I can't tell if it looks any good or not because when I go in there all I see are pretty swirly colors and Dave has to drag me out and administer oxygen to revive me.
So we'll see how this works out. If it winds up looking ridiculous I can always rip it all down, spackle over the staple holes and repaint, right?
Oh no.
- KNP March 2, '03
