Blogatron

A Series of Paragraphs With Headings*

WHY I SOMETIMES THINK THAT THE BEST THING FOR ME WOULD BE TO GET HIT IN THE HEAD WITH A MALLET. A RUBBER MALLET:

The damn painting. I bought this painting, see, this fabulous painting. I didn't really have the money for it, but it was so fabulous and so great, and then I got offered a crazy-ass discount on the painting, and so I took it as a sign and I bought it. In mid-December. And since mid-December, this fabulous and beloved painting has been sitting in a bag in my bedroom, in danger of getting kicked by sleepy bathroom-goers and sat on by cats and all manner of indignities. Why Hilatron, you say, this does not seem like the best place for a painting that you claim to like and actually want to look at! And I couldn't agree with you more. But there was a problem, and the problem was me. Before the painting could be hung, a decision needed to be made about where to hang it. For most people, this would involve picking a spot, and...well, that's about it. Just picking a spot, the end. But for me - no. For me, there first needed to be weeks--weeks! of agony about where to hang the painting. Here? No, because that's the perfect place for the plastic Tiki god. Here? But in the bedroom, no one will see it. Here? Will hanging the painting near an air conditioner be bad for it?

So before I could hang the painting, there had to be endless agony and multiple consultations. Experts had to be brought in, man-on-the-street interviews had to be conducted, measurements had to be taken using finely calibrated instruments borrowed from NASA. Finally, a spot was decided on.

Then there was the hanging of the painting. This should be a simple process, after the where-to-hang-the-painting debacle - hammer a damn nail in the damn wall, and hang up the damn painting. However, I have the unique ability to develop psychological problems at the drop of a hat, and this is what happened in the case of the painting. Every single day for the last three weeks I have woken up and said to myself, "Tonight when I get home from work I am going to hang up That Damn Painting." And every night, I have been piddling around my house when suddenly I yell "Damn! The painting!" and then I realize that it is 10:30 or so and too late for hammering. Every. Single. Night. I developed some sort of mental block in which I was unable to think about paintings, or see paintings, or contemplate hanging paintings, between the hours of 5:15pm and 10:00pm.

So last night at 10:30, where was I? Hopping up and down with rage, looking at the painting on the floor of the bedroom in a bag. Damn it! I finally decided to just damn the neighbors and get my damn hammer and hang up the damn painting for good and all, so that's the end of that sorry saga. Damn.

HOW DRY IS IT?

The arctic chill of last week has passed, but my skin carries the trauma onward. It is so dry that twice-daily moisturizer applications just make it laugh bitterly. So dry that when I stepped into the shower this morning, the sound of the water hitting the tub floor ceased as my skin sucked up all the moisture in the room. So dry that when I went to Walgreen's last night three dozen bottles of Vaseline Intensive Care leapt off the shelf and stuck to the back of my coat, held in place by the absorbent force of my desperate skin.

WHY DO I BOTHER?

I have been careful this week to go to bed on time, yet every day by three o'clock I would sell my left eye just to be allowed to crawl behind my desk for a nice little ten-hour nap. What's up?

BACK ON TRACK

That last entry, I realized, was not very Leisurely. I restored my mental balance by making mad updates over at the Agency. Links to all the new goodies can be found here.

*To avoid pulling a Bryan Lamb, I must attribute the style of this entry to Mimi Smartypants. Homage or clumsy imitation - whatever, at least my footnotes are in order.

Posted by hilatron at January 22, 2004 10:15 AM