Hanging On By A Thread

I don’t know if I have mentioned this before, since I keep so much a secret, but I’m a wee bit accident prone. I know, I know it’s hard to believe what with me getting hit by a car just casually crossing the street to my high school and all. I am though, accident prone. My mom, Nurse Meme, always said it was because I was going where I was looking and not looking where I was going. Only, this time I wasn’t going anywhere.


Now I know you are sitting there scratching your head, I notice you do that a lot whilst reading my blog, and asking “Oh goodgawd Gladys! What in the heck did you do now?” Well I’ll tell you what. You didn’t really think I was just going to say I was accident prone then sign off with a fine howdoyoudo did you? Nope that just wouldn’t be fittin. Now what is suppose fit I’m not really sure; but that is something my Nanny would have said. She would have said “Now Gladys, that wouldn’t be fittin, to start a story then just leave me hanging.” So I’m not going to leave you hanging. I was almost hanging and that is where my story begins and coincidently ends.

You see Kahuna and I are involved in a project. This project involves painting over some really awful paint in a house. I perused numerous Traditional Home and Architectural Digest magazines. I consulted Martha Stewart’s web site. Heck I read and re-read Censational Girl’s blog before deciding the best and cheapest way to stage this house was to paint the walls taupe.

Have you ever been to the Home Depot and told the paint guy you want taupe? They look at you and scratch their heads and say “what color taupe do you want?” You stand there looking at Mr. I Mix Paint at The Home Depot and reply “taupe. You know not brown but not tan. Taupe!” Mr. IMPATHD sighs heavily pulls out a color chart with 47,000 colors of taupe and says “which taupe?” You then beleaguer over the charts. You fret over the sandy taupe as opposed to the winter taupe. You finally narrow down your choices to 52 of the 47,000 shades of taupe. You look up to realize that there are now 275 people in line waiting to get their already decided on color of taupe. You pull a number and wait your turn.

Finally Mr. IMPATHD calls your number and you scream “BINGO” because you have been waiting so long you are now in support hose and daydreaming you are at the Bingo parlor. You take your taupe color chart and show Mr. IMPATHD the ones you think might work. He again sighs heavily and asks “which one?” You smile sweetly and say “could I have a tester of each of these?” Now let me tell you those little tester jars are genius! GENIUS!

You gather up all 52 varying shades of taupe and march right up to the self serve check station. You happily slide each jar across the scanner and cough up the $274.57 for your test jars. You slide your credit card just as the elderly man behind you says “I remember back when Hank had the only hardware store in town. He saved all his Gerber baby food jars and would give you FREE samples.” You smile at the sweet man and say “isn’t that nice” but what you really mean is “screw you, you grumpy old fart! I was happy paying two bucks for my samples and now you’ve ruined it.” You then bag your $274.57 worth of jars that 40 years ago you could have gotten free for a few baby food jars and slink back to your car.

You arrive at the project jars and sponges in tow. You rush into the offensive room and break into all 52 jars. You slather paint here and you sponge it there trying to decide the perfect shade of taupe. You are now covered in paint. The floor is covered with various shades of taupe, which is actually helpful in deciding which shade is best with the carpet. You blow dry and wait until the paint is cured. Then you try and decide which of the 52 shades is the perfect shade. The only problem is you forgot to label which color was which and now you can’t remember from which jar what paint sallied forth. You move to another wall and start all over again only this time you mark your paint.

You finally decide on a shade and you rush back to The Home Depot and wait in line. Your number is called and you sidle up to the counter and look Mr. IMPATHD in the eye and you say “I would like 5 gallons of the 05GLNX vanilla latte double cappuccino taupe, please.” He sighs heavily (I am beginning to think that Mr. IMPATHD has a pulmonary dysfunction from sniffing too much paint) and says “flat, enamel, egg shell, semi-gloss, high gloss or super high semi gloss double latte?” You are now doubting yourself. What is the rule? No flat on enamel? No enamel on flat? Double latte has too much fat? What is it? You make a command decision and reply “semi-gloss eggshell please.” You make this statement with conviction. You stand firm even though Mr. IMPATHD raises one eyebrow in doubt and smirks. You wait while the paint machine shakes your paint. You wait while Mr. IMPATHD puts a dab on a card and whips his blow dryer from his holster like an old west gunslinger. He then brings you the card and says “are you sure this is what you want?” You swallow hard and squeak out “I think so.”

You wrestle the 4000 lbs of 05GLNX vanilla latte double cappuccino taupe into the back of your car and head back to the project house. You strain and pull and pull and strain until finally your loving husband easily lifts the almost weightless paint from the back of your car and carries it into the offensive room. He smiles lovingly at you and says “you do know you need to put primer on those baby shit green walls don’t you? Otherwise it will bleed through and you will have 05GLNX vanilla latte double cappuccino taupe walls seeping baby shit green.” He then goes with you back to face Mr. IMPATHD. The two speak some kind of man speak. They look over at you with pity then they talk some more about whites and covering colors and using rollers then they grunt a little and the deal is done. I am back at the project house painting coats of chalky white primer on baby shit green walls.

I am finally ready to put the beautiful 05GLNX vanilla latte double cappuccino color on my walls when Kahuna looks at me and says “we need to tape the ceilings so that we don’t bleed into the ceiling color.” Now it was my turn to look at him with pity because I know I have not cut myself and I’m not bleeding on anything. Kahuna knowing what I’m thinking, because he is psychic that way says “the paint running into the other paint and making a mess, type of bleeding.” I shrug and act like I knew that all a long. Kahuna then drags out this 40 foot ladder. Okay, it was really only a 5 foot ladder but for me that is equal to a 40 foot ladder. This brings me to another point. My nephew Lughead Larry couldn’t pronounce ladder when he was little. He called it a yadder. Well as things go I can not now call it by its real name and can only call it by its Lughead Larry name, yadder. Oh and no, he didn’t call himself Yughead Yarry. I digress.

Kahuna loves me. Kahuna adores me. Kahuna will not let me do dangerous things. Yet he put this ladder in the room and walked out. Now I’m sure Kahuna thought I knew better than to climb up on the yadder. I’m sure he thought I had enough sense to keep both of my feet flat on the ground. Kahuna forgot though, that I am head strong and am invincible in my own pea brain. I grabbed the roll of blue tape and I crawled up that yadder. I didn’t stop on the first step. I didn’t desist on the second step. Heck I didn’t even flinch at the fourth step. Nope I kept right on climbing until I reached the very tippy top of that yadder. Then you know what I did? Did I sit down and get my balance? Did I fasten myself into some type of a safety harness? Of course I did not. I climbed to the top of that yadder and I took a roll of blue tape and reached as far out as my arms would stretch. I reached out so far that the yadder started leaning the opposite way.

I felt the yadder sway but that didn’t stop me. Oh no. Oh contraire. I instead reached out further. I don’t know what I thought would happen. Perhaps I thought that the weight of the air would balance me out. It did not. Instead the yadder flew to the left, I lurched to the right. Then as if it were all in a Quinton Tarantino flick I felt myself falling in slow motion. I kicked out with my feet trying to right the wrongness of the situation. Then my head hit the closet shelf. The shelf where you store your shoes and bags. The shelf which needed a coat of GX247 Suisse coffee high gloss enamel. My head bounced not once but twice off the shelf and all I could think was don’t try and catch yourself with your hands. I mean at least I had enough sense to know this could break a wrist. So I tried to tuck my arm in front of me but this threw my body into a semi-spin. Again I could see this all happening as if I were having a Shirley McClain Out On a Limb moment. I clawed at the air. I tried to climb the nothingness. I tried to hang suspended like Wylie Coyote after going over the cliff to no avail. Instead I ended up landing hip first with my left wrist under me, then the rest of my weight on my tailbone. Then all went black.

I blinked my eyes to make sure I was still alive. I slowly tried to move my feet. I was relieved to feel pain. I tried to push into a sitting position when I realized my vision was a little fuzzy and my head was throbbing. I tried my wrist and hand, they both worked. I moved my neck, it worked. I tried standing and I could. I was okay. I would live. Another catastrophe survived. Kahuna rushed in and said “you didn’t climb that yadder did you?” I was extremely sore and embarrassed. I shook my head yes but this just made me dizzy. He looked into my eyes. He made me follow his finger from one side to the other with my eyes and then he commissioned me to bed rest for the rest of my day. Hum, maybe I have a way to get the room painted like Tom Sawyer had getting his fence whitewashed. I think I like Tom’s way better, I bet he didn’t wake up with a killer headache.