Nailing Fashion...Every Time

Just when I think the exciting parts of my day had come to a close, I come home from work to find that a bottle of nail polish has completely overturned and sneakily unscrewed itself in my bag.  I had brought Loréal's Tweet Me, a canary yellow shade that made me feel sunny just looking at it, to work to paint my nails over my lunch break.  It was so innocent.

What proceeds is a comic romp, but with sounds of sadness instead of sassy montage music.

I retrieve the bottle of nail polish from the depths of my bag and set it on the table, where it immediately sticks.  Then I quickly grapple it away before it can totally fuse to the surface, and holding it between my fingers, which are sporting freshly painted yellow fingernails, I peer into the bottom of the bag and pull out my Kindle, where a fiendish blob of polish threateningly clings to the bottom edge of the cover, but thankfully has not touched the actual device.  (Editor's note: I have already spilled red wine and water, on separate occasions, on my Kindle, which is part of what prompted the purchase of the case).  I scratch at the gooey blob on the cover to prize it away, and more or less just rub it into the surface and into my fingers.

With a sense of futility I gaze upon the other blob at the bottom of my bag, catching the light of my dining room and merrily winking up at me.  It'll dry.

I take the nail polish bottle and move into the bathroom.  My fingers are already conjoined with the bottle, like the rites of a Celtic marriage, but for some reason I still find it a good idea to use them to spatula away a majority of the polish.  The result is as disastrous as you'd expect any idiot could have guessed if they weren't impatient at having to have to clean up nail polish goo mess after a long walk home from work, and if they weren't totally starving and actually more focused on the cupcakes from Dozen Bake Shop in the bag in the kitchen.  But anyway.

I scrape away the polish goo as best I can with the pads of my fingers, trying to save my precious nails, which is more or less to say I smear the goo more fully around the bottle and my fingers, seemingly determined at my own self-destruction.

Okay.  I need nail polish remover.  And cotton balls.  I drop, or rather, violently fling, the polish into the sink, then use my wrist to edge open the cabinet under the bathroom sink.  With one hand I grab the nail polish remover (acetone-free) and plunge the other into the bag of cotton balls.  I don't really need to grab them because I come out with about six sticking to me anyway.  I carefully pour remover onto some of the cotton balls the furthest distance from my still safe nails, and start scrubbing.

I'm proud to say that I got about 80% of the polish off of my fingers and off of the outside of the bottle, but it wasn't all without final casualties to the precious nails.  This all started with the great idea that I had of "I'll do a manicure at work!" and has now become "I will have acid-happy Big Bird fingers!"

Ah well, the color is at least seasonal.

Photo courtesy of http://www.makeupandbeautyblog.com/nails/these-new-loreal-spring-nail-colors-make-it-hip-to-be-riche/.

my own national (regional) treasure!

a recent editorial on jezebel.com tells the story of how a 200-year old french love letter was found recently in the arm of an antique chair, in the process of restoration.

the writer ends his letter to his lady with this adieu:

"my dear, i cover you with kisses and caresses until… i need you in this moment of desire. i love you."

have you ever heard of anything sweeter? well, i suppose you have, naturally. but this is pretty good.

i had a similar story this past year when i had my old piano retuned, back when i was living in gettysburg. i had bought this piano in 2008 from the director of athletics at gettysburg college, dave, who i knew fairly well. dave's father was a piano teacher, and could never get him to play as a child, but in an attempt to pass on the musical tradition, the family had bought the piano for their daughters to learn upon. none of them ended up wanting to play either (sad!) so dave was happy to sell this slightly beat up, but decent, little upright console wurlizter from the 70's to me for $100.

so this lovely old man came to do the tuning, and since neither of us knew when it was tuned last, he decided to make a thorough job of it and pulled the baseboards out from underneath. as he pulled off the boards, an aged square of paper fell out onto the carpet. we both paused and looked at it, the curiosity and excitement growing in me like a narrative scene from a nancy drew novel come to life.

he picked up the paper and handed it to me and asked if it was mine. no, i said, looking at it carefully. it was an envelope, yellowed and dusty, but fairly well preserved from having been inside the piano all this time. the seal was already broken, so whoever was the recipient must have already perused the message inside. or had they?

with trembling fingers i pulled out the letter and flipped it open. it was written on a greeting card with a scenic picture from somewhere in upstate new york, and inside the tiny script filled each available side of the paper. the date on the letter read 1974! feeling somewhat guilty, but then too curious to feel all that guilty, i started to read the letter.

it was a message to no one in dave's family that i knew of, but the contents were fairly simple–greetings after a journey home from college, news on the family, etc. fairly uneventful. and yet, if i returned this letter to dave, what would be his reaction? was such a simple transaction to dredge up memories of a long forgotten–or perhaps repressed–family connection, a friendship that had once been so close, but which inopportune circumstances had rendered asunder?

i carefully put the letter and envelope in a ziplock bag and the next day, i emailed dave and told him about what i'd found. his reply gave little away: he was surprised, but interested, and agreed to take a look at it.

then came the big moment to give it to him. i wasn't able to find an opportunity so i gave it to my colleague ryan who said he would be seeing the family later that day. ryan was under strict instructions to give me every last detail of dave's reaction. he promised.

i waited for the news to come. the next day, i eagerly ran down to ryan's office and demanded a recounting of yesterday's events. i could just envision dave's eyes alighting on the letter…then widening with recognition…then filling with bitter, but tender tears. i looked expectantly at ryan.

ryan shrugged. "yeah, he had no idea what that was about. some cousin or something."

dammit. why isn't real life ever like in movies?

happy halloween!

i am feeling surprisingly full of health and energy despite the fact that i went to bed at 5:00am this morning after partying for six hours, and then walking 1.6 miles home. i know this sounds lame, but i think the secret so far has been lots of cups of tea, and lots of sleep. so yes, i went to bed at 5:00am, but i slept today until 1:30pm.

which, ok, partially explains why i'm up writing this blog post at 12:39am when i should be a-bed, but i'll get to that in a minute. i went to a party at caitlin's house for all of the english masters students, and danced the night away to "thriller," "in the navy," "monster mash," and other favorites, with great zest, but by about 2:00am i was ready to sleep. so how did i end up leaving at about 4:00am instead?

one thing was that i became trapped up in caitlin's bedroom talking with a man who was–no, not trying to rape me–demanding to know why i had never read anything by vonnegut. and he wasn't even one of the masters students.

the other thing was that i was waiting for my friends to be ready to leave because we were all walking home together. rachael was quite ready to go when i was–we were both exhausted. but brittany is our MA event coordinator, so she had to stick around and clean up.

and michael…michael was just drunk, and having a great time, and there was no pulling him away from the fun. we tried several times, in fact, to get him to the front door, but somehow he would sneak away and you'd find him back in the kitchen looking for another beer, or at the food table stuffing pretzels in his mouth, which was actually quite comical.

so that left brittany and i to try and get michael out the door, and not appear drunk so that if anyone should approach us, it looked like we had a competent, sober man of considerable strength at our disposal. yeah, right.

it was then that brittany announced that our walk home was about 1.6 miles. beautiful. we started out into the biting night (or morning?) air, with michael lurching behind us making rude commentary. by the time we gained south negley ave., he was murmuring something about the children he was going to bear, or something, while brittany and i mostly ignored him.

then we had to stagger up the quarter-mile, forty-five degree angle incline of south negley ave. at least at this point the walk had started to make me slightly warmer. michael helped by stealing a joe sestak sign and dragging it behind him on the sidewalk.

by the time we got close to my apartment building, the story now was that michael wanted to bear his own children so that they would only have his own genes (?). i was so glad to pass him off to brittany's responsibility.

when i got home i made myself a cup of hot tea, put a hot water bottle under the blankets, and fell grately into bed…at approximately 4:48am.

flea-eradication project (FEP): part II

today i enacted part II of the flea-eradication project, or FEP. here are some terrifying stats about fleas, according to vetmedicine.about.com:

• "the total flea life cycle can range from a couple weeks to several months, depending on environmental conditions"
• "the adult female flea can lay up to 50 eggs per day, 500-600 eggs over several months"
• "flea saliva, like other biting skin parasites, contains an ingredient that softens, or "digests" the host's skin for easier penetration and feeding"

great. so today i vacuumed the whole apartment, wet-vacuumed the furniture, and tossed all of my bedding and blankets in the wash. huck, now used to his flea collar, has been complacent this whole time, watching me with mild bemusement as i run around the apartment like a madwoman. but i can't help it...i'm becoming paranoid about flea saliva.

here is my hope: neither cat has been scratching themselves at all, and in fact if i hadn't seen the little blighter crawling across huck's fur, you'd never think there was a problem. so hopefully i have caught this at the beginning and can terminate it before it escalates into an infestation. but vetmedicine.about.com doesn't make it sound very promising. sigh. pray for me.

fleas!!!!

ooooh huck has a flea. a flea. no way.

tonight, when i should have been focused on reading the way of the world, i instead looked down at my cat, who was snoozing on top of me, to see a tiny black thing moving across his furry white chest. i leaned forward and put my fingers against his fur, and yes, the little black thing jumped out of sight. definitely a flea. huck, of course, began purring happily because his mama was petting him. totally oblivious.

in that moment i realized just how much stuff huck was touching. the blanket we were wrapped up in together, the couch, the pillows on the couch, my bed which he had just been sitting on moments before. ughhhhhhh.

with a shudder i jumped up from the couch, threw on my trench coat and some flip flops, and ran down the street to, thank God almighty, the 24-hour rite aid. two flea collars later, i came back home and opened the apartment door. there, jack and huckleberry sat on laz-e-boy recliner and couch, respectively, looking trustingly up at me. oh, what they didn't realize.

luckily i was able to get the collars on them with minimal bloodshed. huck has never worn a collar, so he didn't even know what was coming, and as jack ran over to sniff it and commiserate, i quickly advanced from behind and slipped his around him. he definitely gave me a look of betrayal, but they will thank me one day.

they will thank me one day.

no more touch!

i am not clever. do you ever have moments where you feel like you should just crawl into a hole and not come out for awhile, until whatever curse is causing you to mess up everything you touch decides to leave you alone?

ok, that's rather dramatic. but really. last week, i made a physical mess of everything in the kitchen. it was as if, every time i tried to get something off a shelf or from a cabinet, i'd mess up three more things next to it. i knocked all of the tupperware out of the cabinets--out of two separate cabinets, mind you. in the pantry i reached for a plastic ziplock baggie and knocked all of the storage bag/tin foil/plastic wrap boxes off of the shelf, lodging them securely behind the pantry shelves in such a manner that they will never be seen again. that action caused a ripple effect, effectively knocking over a large box of tea, which of course was open, so all of the individual tea bags scattered all over the pantry, into more impossible crevices. that in turn fell into the bag of cat kibble, scattering kibble in the process, which i then stepped on and ground into the kitchen floor, and then the cats came running because they had to see what was going on, and started batting kibble and tea bags around the floor. throughout all of this i tried in vain to catch anything i could, while holding my ziplock bag, but by the end i just threw it back into the pantry, slid the doors shut against the trauma within, and ran away.

at work the chaos continued. one of my guidance counselors called to say that a family weekend had accidentally been rescheduled for the weekend i wanted to visit, and so i found that i had to change my flight time in order to be able to actually meet any students. so i went on united.com and changed the flight, but i didn't realize until i hit the submit button that i'd be charged an extra $150.00 to make the change.

and now, i've registered for the gre subject test only to find out today that the date i chose i may have to work in the admissions office... and it will be an extra $50.00 to change the date of the test. sigh. i need to stop trying to do things until the planetary alignments shift in my favor, or something. arg!