project 365 #278: shadows on the wall

project 365 #278: shadows on the wall
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

I am macho. Fear me! Yesterday I went to Lowes and bought, sigh, a new lawnmower because the old one has given up the ghost. Once you've paid $50 to fix a $100 lawnmower and it's still not working, it's time to put it out on the curb. Goodbye, red lawnmower that killed the copperhead. Sing requiem. You'll never shoot another twig into my face.

So I bought a new cheapass lawnmower and two cans of red spray paint. Then I came home and dragged my new hideous chair, kindly deposited in my living room on Friday by either C or some of his minions, out onto a tarp on the deck and spray painted it candy apple gloss red. Then I floated around the stratosphere on the paint fumes for a while, listening to my brain cells shriek as they died and went to bed. Today, I went back to Lowes, bought more paint and a wrench to build the lawnmower, since the directions told me I would need one. I'd never bought a wrench before. I got a bit muddled as to what, exactly, a wrench was, but I finally figured it out, which made me feel competent and smart. Okay, it took 40 minutes of wandering lost around the tool department until I intuited the difference between a wrench and a socket set, but I did it.

Then I finished painting the chair, assembled the lawnmower (which was a royal pain in the ass) and mowed the front yard and half the giant back yard. I took the stinky covers off the stinky foam cushions, washed the covers in the bathtub (which was unbelievably gnarly) and scrubbed the cushions themselves with Febreze, baking soda, vinegar and some weird spray stuff called Odo-Ban which I found in the back of a cabinet and I think dates from the desperate days of Theo's housetraining mishaps. All this should exorcise the ghost of the chair's previous owner, who I believe by the strength of his odor was either a secret undercover Yeti or a large old man who sank into that chair in 1975 and didn't get up again, smoking all the way.

My stomach finally feels better, as you may have guessed. Who knows what the hell it was? My mother now claims that a cousin of hers had an appendix that acted up now and again for 40 years until it finally burst when he was conveniently alone in a canoe on a lake in Canada. Canoeing in Canada is my new euphemism for death - he lived, but minor details shouldn't affect good euphemisms. My brother told me Friday night that he went into the hospital to have his appendix taken out when he was 9 but after 3 days it had gone back down and they sent him home with appendix intact. So I've decided that chancy appendices run in the family and I am not going to worry about it anymore. I'm just hoping it doesn't come back and I keep on feeling okay - it's odd, whenever I'm sick I have trouble believing myself. I think, oh, I'm not really sick, I'm slacking, I'm imagining it, I'm actually okay, this is all in my head. And I believe that and yell at myself internally a lot until I feel better, at which point I go, damn, I felt like shit on a proverbial shingle for more than 2 weeks, didn't I? And it wasn't all in my head, what do you know.