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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Do you ever do something that you know is completely futile? Something that, from prior experience, will surely be frustrating and pointless and guaranteed to whack another slice off your dwindling faith in humanity? And yet, due to some wild hope or unfounded optimism or possibly temporary amnesia, you do it anyway?
Yeah. My wife did that today.
In a few days, we’re having some work done in our condo. Said work will futz up one of the walls in the guest bedroom a bit, and so we’re also having the room repainted.
(For the record, we used to paint our own walls. We’re pretty bad at it, and we’re messy as hell, so we don’t paint our own things any more.
Seriously, we may be the sloppiest painters ever. Our last project involved painting a dining room this dark maroon color, and we got the stuff everywhere. I still have the shorts I wore; when I put them on, it looks like my crotch killed a hobo with a chainsaw or something.
That look might work on the set of a porno slasher flick. Chilling at a block party cookout — not so much.)
My wife, of course, has opinions on what the new color of the walls should be. I do not have such opinions, particularly. I barely have an opinion on the current color of the walls, and that’s almost certainly wrong.
“I just don’t much care what colors the walls are, short of ‘expired milk green’ or ‘you should probably have a doctor look at that pink’.”
(I’d call them “white”. But it can’t possibly be that simple. They’re probably “eggshell cream” or “Siberian winter mist” or “untanned Canadian ass” or something. Who can keep up with the Gliddens of the world?)
She’s asked me about such decorating decisions in the past, and I’ve been relentlessly, consistently unhelpful. Not willfully unhelpful, mind you. I’m not trying to obstruct the process, or piss into anyone’s bowl of paint thinner. I just don’t much care what colors the walls are, short of “expired milk green” or “you should probably have a doctor look at that pink”. And there are only so many swatches of more-or-less-gray that I can look at before I stop trying to play nice and wander off for beer and sanity.
How many swatches? Two. Two is the number of swatches I’m good for. Not fourteen. Not thirty-seven, and which one brings out the mahogany tinge in the doorknobs the best. And not a freaking rainbow of grays pasted all over the room, like we’re redecorating for a United Barely-Ass-Colors of Colorblind Benetton. Two.
Now, I understand why the missus tries to draw me into these discussions. She wants me to feel a part of the process. She wants the decision to feel bilateral. Probably, she’s looking for someone to scapegoat, should the color “we” pick fail to make the hobnails in the hardwood floor pop the way “we” expected it would. But mostly, she wants us to be equally engaged in these matters of household, to share our opinions, and tackle projects together.
Which I’m perfectly happy to do, of course. I just don’t care about the color of the walls. But I’ve got lots of exciting ideas for the guest room. Tons! We could put in a pool table.
(I’m told we’re not putting in a pool table. There’s no room.)
Or how about a minibar?
(No minibar. Come on.)
A ball pit? A mirror ball? An in-floor koi pond?
(If I’m not going to be serious, she says, then I won’t be consulted on any decisions.
An empty threat. But it shuts me up. Just in case I can still wrangle the minibar out of her.)
So there we are, in the guest room, staring at her monocolor dreamcoat of indistinguishable gray swatches littering the walls. She’s been extolling the virtues of one grayish glob over another — well, this one is brighter, but this one really resonates with the trim in the hallway — for a while, and I’ve been nodding sagely and thinking.
About football, mostly. And beer. And how they could improve those CapriSun pouches if they made the backs out of really strong material instead of foil. Right? Like, if the back side was wood or steel or carbon fiber or something, then you’d never punch that little straw all the way through, like sometimes happens. And then you could make the straw stronger, too, so it wouldn’t bend up and crumple when you miss the punch hole on the front side. So keep the foil in the front, make the straw out of, like, bamboo or something, and just reinforce the shit out of the back panel. That’s so much better. I should talk to-
Oh. This gray is the same shade they paint space shuttle re-entry tiles or something. Mm-hmm. That’s an option. Put it on the short list, dear.
Finally, my brain shut completely off. I stood there, trying in vain to look helpful and concerned, when she accidentally triggered my smartass reflex. She said:
“…oh, and this one, what do you think of it? See, it has just a hint of pale blue, almost a little bit green-“
Some part of me woke up and locked on: “Aw, snap, yo!”
She took this sudden — and largely involuntary — exclamation as interest, which pleased her. Temporarily. “What? Do you like it? What is it?”
I was moving without thinking, arching my back and emphatically crossing my arms.
“Dawg… shit just got TEAL!”
…
I don’t know what color the guest bedroom will end up being. But I sure hope I like it, because it looks like I’ll be sleeping there for the foreseeable future.
Maybe I’ll get to put in that minibar.
Permalink | No CommentsSo. I have a bathroom problem.
…
Hey, where are you going? It’s not that kind of bathroom problem, ya squeamish screwjob. This one involves vitamins. And counting. Or the lack thereof.
I’ll explain. And I’ll steer well clear of any toilet-related shenanigans. Probably.
Maybe.
We’ll see.
“One is a daily multivitamin that’s apparently “FOR MEN”, which I suppose means it’s full of iron and steel and motor oil sludge and Vitamin K for ‘Kickass’ or something.”
Anyway, here’s the thing. I take two sorts of vitamins, which I keep in a medicine cabinet in the bathroom. One is a daily multivitamin that’s apparently “FOR MEN”, which I suppose means it’s full of iron and steel and motor oil sludge and Vitamin K for ‘Kickass’ or something. The other I also take daily; it’s a less-complicated — and evidently gender-neutral — supplement.
(All right, nosypants — specifically, it’s a bottle of fish oil pills for heart health.
I know, I know. At my age, I should probably be taking an entire slew of supplementary horse pills to ward off the various nightmares approaching. You probably think I should be gulping down arthritis relievers and hair ungrayers and testosterone boosts and MegaFiberMax and OsteoBoneGroBack and chewable fruit-flavored Alzheimers-B-Gone.
Also, you’re probably a smartass. Nice talk.)
Now, I take these pills every day.
Of course, that’s not “German every day”, which means “every single day at a regimented time, with utmost precision and cold efficiency”. Nor is it, say, “Japanese every day”, or “every single day, the better to maximize physical and mental capability and morph into some supercomputing sumo ninja or something”. It’s not even “North Korean every day”, namely “every single day, or they’ll throw you into a forced labor camp and I’ll bet you wish you had your precious vitamin pills now, eh, insolent pigdog, praise the Leader?”
Rather, it’s “American every day”, which is more like “most days, except on the weekends, probably, and occasionally when I forget or it’s a holiday or something and I’m busy lying on the couch in my underpants watching ‘Archer‘ reruns”.
The point is not when I take these pills, however. Nor how often, nor what flavor ice cream I’m scooping out of the tub with a spatula on lazy holiday afternoons.
(Though for the record, I’m partial to raspberry swirl.)
The point is this — when I take one of these vitamin pills, I always take the other. Without fail or exception. I may forget both, but never just one or the other. Both bottles hold the same number of pills — 200 count. And I start new bottles of each on the same day.
So why the hell do I keep running out of one before the other?
Every time I reach the bottom of one vitamin bottle, there are pills still rattling around in the other. Every time, I’m convinced it’s because i was out of sync the last time around, and kept the extra pills. And every time, I vow to fix the system, so I throw away the last handful of pills in one bottle, so as to realign to coordinated vitaminical harmony.
And every stupid time, I wind up with no pills in one bottle, and four in the other. Or two. Or nine. And I think I’ve gone nuts or sleepgulped or forgotten and kept the extra vitamins when I started the bottles.
(Because let’s face it, on the “American every day” schedule, 200 pills takes, what — three and a half years to finish? I can’t remember things that long ago. It’s not like I’m popping Geritol4Brains over here. Yet.)
But the last few times, I’ve been very careful. The bottles start out even. I make sure not to drop any pills, or accidentally swallow a two-fer, or anything like that. It’s a race from 200 to zero, and it should be a dead heat. But it’s not. It never is.
At first, I thought my wife might be taking the odd pill from me. Because she’s normal, and wouldn’t expect a thing like this to keep someone up at night.
But that doesn’t seem likely — mostly because she’s got her own stash of vitamins, which she keeps far away in the kitchen. And her multivitamin is specifically “FOR WOMEN”, according to the label, so I assume it’s pH-balanced and scented with lavender and compliments her on her slim and attractive esophagus as it slides down the hatch.
In other words, I’d be terrified to take one of her vitamins. I can only imagine she’s as insanely frightened of taking mine. She might grow hair on her testicles.
Also, she might grow testicles. I probably should have put that bit first. If she took my vitamins, she might grow testicles. And then grow hair on those. Both of which are bad, from a womanly point of view. I assume.
Ahem.
The point is, she’s probably not scarfing my multivitamins. And she’s got her own fish pills, too, which probably taste like chocolate or strawberries or a new pair of kicky heels, so there’s no need to come slumming for my fish pills in the medicine cabinet, which don’t taste like any of those things. They taste like nothing. Or occasionally, they taste like fish, which is when you really miss all those times they tasted like nothing.
(And then you wonder why the oil has to come from fish in the first place. Like, why can’t they squeegee the stuff off something tastier, like popcorn shrimp or Canadian bacon or Bar Rafaeli? I’m no nutritionologist. I’m just asking.)
It’s possible, of course, that there really aren’t 200 pills in each of these bottles to start with. I know, I know — if you can’t trust the advertising on a heavily-discounted off-brand drug store bottle of dietary supplement, then what can you trust? Still. It’s possible.
But what am I going to do, count all the pills before I start a new bottle? Please. Two hundred is a big number. It’s practically infinity, and who knows if I’d make it all the way there accurately once, much less twice. Counting that high is for other people — the accountants and fish pill sorters and door bouncers for particularly large clubs of the world.
So the problem remains unsolved. And right now, in my medicine cabinet at home, I have two nearly empty bottles. One with three multivitamins, and another with seven fish oil pills. I don’t know how it got that way. Some mysteries, I suppose humans just weren’t meant to solve.
Permalink | No CommentsI have a request. I need someone out there to start a business for me. Nothing fancy; just leave whichever dead-end soul-sucking job you’re currently in, throw together a logo or some letterhead, maybe, and make it happen. No biggie.
Here’s your business plan:
When people return from vacation — jetlagged, exhausted and full of airline peanuts — your service kicks in. You bring a van to their door, loaded with employees. The clients schlep into their house or apartment, and you follow them in. They close themselves into a bedroom and sleep the sleep that only rumpled, ragged recent tourists can muster. And you go to work.
You unpack their suitcases. You put away the travel toiletries and the souvenir gravy boats and the backup pack of neck massager batteries. You load their filthy sweaty clothes, caked with the mud of faraway exotic swampholes, into baskets — and while they slumber away, you wash it. And dry it, and fold it, and don’t use too much fabric softener or make anything itchy or inside-out the socks.
Also, don’t tri-fold the underpants. Seriously. They’re just underwear. Fold them once, and move on. You’ve got a lot of work to do, already.
“There’s probably just a box of tissues or maybe a SkyMall flyer in there. But just in case. Don’t go there.”
If the clients signed up for the “premium” service, maybe you tack on a couple of extras. Store the luggage back in the basement or wherever. Water some plants. Throw out those two bananas that they forgot to throw away that are still sitting on the kitchen counter, like a couple of squishy rotting dildos.
(Speaking of which, I wouldn’t look in those little pockets inside the suitcase lid. There’s probably just a box of tissues or maybe a SkyMall flyer in there. But just in case. Don’t go there.)
Anyway, you get the idea. Everybody knows the worst part of vacation is transitioning back to regular life; we need a company to take the hassle out of it for us. When you finally stumble home after a week or so away, fighting flight delays and lost luggage and with the office looming in the too-near future, the last thing you want to do is tidy up and start unpacking. Instead, you could fall into bed, dream the night away, and wake up to a home that looks just like it did before you started throwing cargo shorts at suitcases and cramming every book on your summer reading list into a backpack.
Only cleaner. Because let’s face it, you’re not that tidy even on a good day. Also, those bananas. Ick.
Frankly, I think it’s a grand idea. Possibly the best that mankind has ever had. If we could just get a few of those people who are spinning their wheels, wasting their lives trying to teach children or cure cancer or whatnot, onto this project, I’m sure we could tackle it in short order.
I mean, I’d do it myself. But I just got back from vacation. And I’ve got some very nasty bananas to deal with. Chop chop, entrepreneurs.
Permalink | No CommentsThe missus and I are returning from our Great Montana Migration of 2013 tomorrow. While we’re still here in Glacier National Park, I thought I’d relay some of the signs I’ve seen posted around the park for visitors, tourists and hikers.
“These bears are not like Yogi Bear or Smokey the Bear or Mike Ditka the Bear or the musical bruins of the Southern nightmare Country Bear Jamboree.”
Of course, I don’t actually read these signs all the way through. Some of them are pretty long — where by “pretty long”, I mean longer than “YIELD”. But I get the gist, pretty much. And some of the messages have been reinforced by various guides, bus drivers and Sasquatch-resembling outdoorsmen during our trip.
So here’s what some of the park signs say.
More or less.
Probably.
PLEASE DO NOT APPROACH THE BEARS
This is an area of frequent bear activity. If you are unfamiliar with this area, you may not be aware of important and fundamental details about these bears. These bears are not like Yogi Bear or Smokey the Bear or Mike Ditka the Bear or the musical bruins of the Southern nightmare Country Bear Jamboree. Rather, these bears are large, furry, unpredictable, territorial, grizzly and want nothing more than to be left alone to eat berries and sleep and poop in the woods.
On second thought, we take it back: these bears are exactly like Mike Ditka the bear.
PLEASE DO NOT APPROACH THE BEARS
DO NOT BE A DICK TO PLANTS
This side of the park gets approximately fourteen hundred feet of snow a year. The plants here live eight thousand feet above sea level, and have maybe three months to grow and flower before Mother Nature comes back and takes another big white dump on their heads.
If somebody planted your fat ass in the tundra ice, would you want people coming by stepping on you and picking your petals and letting their grubby snot-nosed children paw your leaves? No, you would not.
These plants are bad-ass enough already. Please don’t tempt them into evolving poison needles or flesh-melting pollen or some shit like that.
DO NOT BE A DICK TO PLANTS
HIKERS SHOULD ALWAYS CARRY BEAR SPRAY
If you’re hiking through these woods, you may encounter a bear. Where ‘encounter’ may mean “have your face ripped off your head by”. As a prevention to having your face or other soft tender parts forcibly removed from your body by a bear, the park recommends carrying bear spray at all times in the wilderness. As a last resort, firing this pepper spray at a charging bear should cause the bear to retreat.
We are aware that this spray is costly; ounce per ounce, it may be more expensive than Chanel No. 5. We do not recommend spraying bears with Chanel No. 5, however. It is unknown whether Chanel No. 5 will repel a bear, or simply enrage the bear as it would most unsuspecting customers spritzed in a shopping mall.
We also do not recommend preemptively spraying yourself with bear spray to ward off nearby bears. Though this may be effective, the practice will also likely ward off nearby humans, and will possibly ward your skin away from the rest of your body — in a similar fashion as Chanel No. 5.
ABSOLUTELY NO SPEEDING
The speed limit on this road is 15 miles per hour. Many park rangers live on this road, and they know the difference between 15 miles per hour and 17 miles per hour. They will enforce the speed limit under all circumstances.
Because this road is in a national park, a speeding ticket constitutes a federal offense. This means that if you exceed the posted speed limit, you may well be thrown into a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison, very possibly with an ill-tempered bear as a cellmate.
Maybe the kind of bear you’re thinking of. And maybe not. Also maybe Mike Ditka. Your move, leadfoot.
DO NOT RUN FROM BEARS
Bears are predatory mammals. They are also not especially bright. If you run from a bear, it will assume that you are made of chocolate or gingerbread or some other delicious substance, and are playing “hard-to-eat”. It will chase you, and it will catch you. And then it will taste you, to see whether it was right.
Presumably, you are not made of chocolate. You may, however, still be delicious to a bear.
DO NOT RUN FROM BEARS
RESTORATION AREA — KEEP OUT
This area has been recently replanted with small trees to replace larger, older trees killed by disease, fire or accident. These seedlings are currently in a delicate state, and must not be disturbed while they recover.
If you insist on entering this area, the National Wildlife Service will dispatch rangers to hunt down your children and torment them in equivalent fashion. We will spread rumors about them in their schools, call them fat in the locker room, and crush their precious hopes and dreams. You think we won’t, but oh yes. The park is only open four months a year. We have a lot of extra ranger time on our hands. Just try us, champ.
* Ref. also nearby signage: “Plants, Do Not Be a Dick to”
HOW TO SURVIVE A BEAR ATTACK
In case of bear attack, you should calmly back away, taking care not to further upset the bear. If this is ineffective, you should speak in a clear and assertive voice to the bear, which may cause the bear to retreat. If the bear does not retreat, you should use bear spray as a last resort to repel it.
If this does not work, you’re probably screwed. But just in case, here’s some advice.
To survive an attack, you must determine the species of bear involved. The park has black bears and grizzly bears; black bears may be brown, and grizzly bears may be black. Both species are “grizzly”, compared to most humans who are not Zach Galifianakis. And both species vary widely in terms of size. These characteristics can thus not be reliably used for identification.
To identify the species of bear, note the size of the claws. Grizzly claws are 3-4 inches long, while black bear claws are only one inch in length. If the bear threatening you is a black bear, you should fight back.
(This assumes that most of your delicate and sensitive bits are safely buried under at least an inch of clothes and flesh. The park recommends wearing several layers of parkas and ’80s-style leg warmers on summer hikes, for this reason.)
If the attacking bear is a grizzly, lie on your stomach and play dead, covering your face and neck with your arms. This method is most effective in repelling an attack if your arms are at least four inches thick. You may want to eat a lot of spinach and pick up a nemesis named ‘Bluto’ before visiting the park, as a safety precaution.
If playing dead is successful, the attack should be brief before the bear gets bored and wanders off. If playing dead is not successful, the attack will also be brief, because grizzly bears are freaking enormous and have those four-inch claws we talked about, so you can at least be solaced by the fact that “playing” dead was your best acting job ever, if also your last.
OH, AND HEY — ENJOY YOUR STAY IN THE PARK!
Permalink | 1 CommentJust a short note from the road tonight; I’m still in the early part of my week’s vacation with the missus and a couple of friends in Glacier Park.
(That’s in Montana. They don’t have a lot of internets in Montana, apparently, so we have to ration. Trees, they have. And bears. And huckleberries, of all things. But not so much the internets. I’ll try to be brief.
It probably won’t work.)
As I mentioned, we’re in Glacier Park, which is not as aptly named as it perhaps could be. There are a couple of glaciers, from what I can gather — we may see these in person later on in the trip — but mostly, the park is full of big huge mountains that were forged by glaciers, way back in the past.
“It’s like being told a major league pitcher is stopping by, and then it’s just Anna Benson.”
Which is not the same thing, exactly. It’s like being told a major league pitcher is stopping by, and then it’s just Anna Benson. Or that you’ll be meeting an Olympic champion, and then the Kardashian kids show up. Not the same. At all.
I guess “Enormous Hunks of Rock That Were Scraped Against for Millions of Years by a Glacier Park” just didn’t have the right ring. And wouldn’t fit on a commemorative novelty cowboy hat, probably. Pity.
Still, the scenery is phenomenal. Lakes and mountains and hills and trees and all the other things that high-pitched lady was singing out in The Sound of Music, probably. Only without the well-trained children. Or the Nazis. So there are pluses and minuses.
Our main activity today was hiking. You might think hiking is a lot like walking, but no. I’m a walker. I walk all the time. I like walking, and — as a biped — I feel I’ve got a pretty good handle on the activity. Hiking seemed like a natural jump.
But no.
Hiking is a different animal altogether. You can’t just “walk” and pretend that you’re hiking. Hiking is related to walking, nominally, but on top of rocks and at altitude. If you want to approximate a real hiking experience, you could wrap a treadmill in extra-coarse sandpaper, set the terrain to “roller coaster”, put a heat lamp overhead and suck half the oxygen out of the room.
Two miles of that would give you a good taste of “hiking”. Then, apparently, you hike nine and a half more. I don’t know why. It’s because humans are inherently evil, I suspect, and must be punished. That’s the explanation that makes the most sense right now.
To be fair, I’m not a “hiker”. At this point, I’m not sure I’ll be much of a “walker” — or for that matter, a “not-doubled-over-in-debilitating-painer” — for the next couple of days, either. I was prepared for hiking, when I thought it was mostly just walking, but with more expensive shoes and a backpack full of trail mix. I was off by a little, and am suffering now for my error. My wife is better off, but also hurting in a lot of places. Most of them below the knees.
Our friends, by the way — who are actual hikers — called the trek “relatively straightforward”. Meanwhile, I may have lost a couple of toenails. I’m frankly afraid to check. Or to move.
So that’s our first nearly-alpine adventure. Tomorrow is whitewater rafting, which I suspect is a lot like taking a bath, only with a paddle and with slightly cooler water.
Seriously, what could possibly go wrong?
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