Furnaces and Bedazzlers

snow trees river
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

I STILL HAVE NO HEAT. And I'm extremely goddamn pissed off about it, actually, and tonight I'm going to find the contract I have with the boiler guy and if it is not ironclad I am opting the fuck OUT of it. He had the nerve to tell me this morning, right after the radio intoned that it was -3 degrees with the windchill, that he couldn't possibly make it to my house this week, since this was an emergency situation and he had a lot of people without heat. OF WHOM I AM ONE, I shouted, and then he said he would loan me a space heater. Fine, asshole. It will replace the one that got ruined last night WHEN THE PIPES FROZE AND BURST AND FLOODED DOWNSTAIRS.

However I cannot talk about that anymore since I start to clench up and shake and then I need to go outside and smoke a cigarette and either drink a shot of whiskey or walk around in circles telling myself to be calm, be calm. Preferably both and since it's too cold to go outside, I will instead change the subject. To bedazzlers, of course.

Audrey and I went to Ross Dress for Less for some retail therapy last week and it was very fun, as it always is. Part of the fun of Ross Dress for Less is going through the racks picking up the most unbelievably hideous thing you can and suggesting it to your shopping companion as something they might like with the straightest face you can muster, which is often not all that straight. This game is improved by the fact that you will find something even more hideous in less than two minutes and then hold that up, etc. However, last week we were forced to admit defeat. There was just too much hideousity for it all to be properly admired.
"What the hell is going on in fashion school nowadays?" asked my daughter as we pondered a green blouse that would have been okay without the Giant Mystic Stones of Power glued haphazardly around the neckline.
"I don't know," I said, admiring the rhinestone Ring of Shininess on the collar of yet another formerly inoffensive top, "But I think they must only be admitting coke addicted twelve year olds with Bedazzlers."

That is probably the sin that led to me having a dream a couple of nights later that I was an incredibly cool art student with a bunch of other incredibly cool art students who were - wait for it - in line for a really cool Asian restaurant! Yes! Even in my dreams I can't get in for good food right away. I was nicely dressed though and in the morning I felt all happy about my beautifully dressed dreamworld self until I started thinking in an awake way about what my subconscious evidently considers the ne plus ultra in high fashion: a handmade black denim vest (and by handmade I mean somebody tore the sleeves off a black denim jacket) with a handpainted picture of John Lennon on it. A big picture of John Lennon weeping red fingernail polish tears of blood, all surrounded by enough glitter and rhinestones to put all of Ross Dress for Less to shame.

Go dream me, go! Time might have taken me out of the worst parts of the 80s (I want my pink Fiorucci skirt back someday, I really do, and my elf boots) but apparently my heart is still right back there with a bedazzler and a jar of fingernail polish.