My Vinyl Weighs a Ton
I spent the better part of yesterday moving 30 plus boxes of Vinyl recordings from distributed parts of the city into the new dwelling. Why couldn’t I have chosen to collect something more lightweight like dried flowers or butterflies? This addiction is going to be the death of me.
Today, I’m exhausted. It’s been a non-stop parade of priming, painting, ripping and throwing the last four days. Two nights ago I had a dream that Mariah Carey and I were playing baseball, and she was pitching paint chips to me and as much as I tried I couldn’t put my bat on any of the chips. I’m sure Freud would have a field day with that one but the dream was very indicative of the entire painting process. Deciding what colors to paint your walls and then actually getting the color on the paint chips to match what you throw up on the wall might just be the eighth wonder of the world. I certainly have no idea how it’s done. I seriously think someone at the hardware store was having a bad day and just decided to fuck with us. No matter what color was chosen, be it ‘sand storm’ or ‘wild wild west’ or mountain sands’ every goddamn color turned out baby pastel pink!! I’m not kidding at all. We now have a second bedroom that will elicit only one response from people who see it, “so when’s the baby due?” This is not good. Not good at all. A note when choosing paint colors. Stay away from anything with a red to pinkish hue, especially if you are looking for subtle shades of white or tan. Do not make the mistake I made.
Yesterday, while making repeated trips from van to house I noticed a loose band of kids starting to form around the edges of the ally. At first, it was just one or two of them, pushing their toy cars around on their driveway and stealing glances at my work. But with every trip back to the van I noticed that their numbers were growing and that they were moving ever so cautiously towards me. Finally, on about the seventh trip, one of them cleared his voice and asked politely, “so are you – like – moving in?”. The Spanish Inquisition of kindergarden and first graders had begun! After the preliminary small talk about ‘Us’ moving in and how tall I was, the hard questions started flying. A cute little girl who couldn’t have been more than four wanted to know “if I had any friends?”. Of course she didn’t mean do I have any friends, but more to the point, “do I have any friends her age that she could play with”. Or put another way, “Do you have any kids?”. Drat. They had me. There I was, standing in the ally with a box of old dusty records that didn’t amount to crap when the currency on the street is ‘friends’. You should have seen the disappointment in these kids faces. Strike one for the new guys on the block.