My Mind, It Hath Been Blown

I just got my mind blown, and it didn't even cost me $5.00 in a Chinatown alleyway.

Usually, I love it when my inbox pings. It's oftentimes bill, but that's okay. I'm comforted by bills. I like regularity, and they're regular, like I'd be after a bowl of Cracklin' Oat Bran, if I ate that shit.

Sometimes, my inbox pings with a missive from an old friend, or one of my rare new ones. All of my new friends are avatars, but I don't mind. You don't have to take avatars out to lunch or listen to them whine or buy them awkward wedding presents. You have to do that with old friends, but I don't especially mind that either.

Tonight, my inbox pinged and it was Aaron, the painter. Aaron, the painter just blew my mind.

Now, I'm the first to admit that I don't know shit about shit when it comes to painting or scaffolding or anything that really has anything to do with manual labor. The fact that I was even able to find my car's battery this morning is actually pretty miraculous. Let's face it; the Jews built the pyramids a long fucking time ago, man, and, since then, we've pretty much washed out hands of the unpleasantries of a physical life. This is why our benevolent and resourceful God invented Mexicans, and Aaron, the painter.

Aaron, the painter, wants to paint our house, because he's a painter and that's pretty much what painters do. The other thing painters do, apparently, is blow your mind. Paint your house, blow your mind. Well, Aaron definitely did the latter, but I'm reasonably sure he's not going to be doing the former.

Now, you have to picture the interior of our house in your mind. Living room, dining room and stairwell (well, most of it) were stripped of old lady wallpaper by the seller's son-in-law prior to our moving in. He used a hand-scraper for all of it. According to the seller, it took him three months, and after removing wallpaper with a scorer, a steamer and a scraper, I kind of believe her. Mrs. Apron and I, when we're not crafting & blogging respectively, are hard at work removing old lady wallpaper from the bedroom and the office and the upstairs hallway, and the kitchen.

If you want to picture what our downstairs and bedroom walls look like in their present condition, close your eyes and imagine a faux finish applied by Alex from "A Clockwork Orange." Our walls are a frenetic and haphazard splotchtastic effluvia of turqouise, pink, green and white. Our shelves lie unassembled against the wall in many, many pieces. Our boxes are still packed away in many, many boxes. There is paper backing in vertical streaks all along our walls, and there's adhesive behind that. In essence, there's miles to go before we sleep.

And we don't sleep much.

See, I like Aaron. Well, I did before I got his quote. Aaron came to our house ten minutes late, but he called to let us know he was running a little late. He showed up wearing a polo knit shirt with his logo embroidered on it-- classy. The only paint visible on him was on his shoes. He had one of those cool sonar-guided measuring devices which he used to take precise measurements of all of our rooms, to know exactly how much to fleece us for-- to the inch. He took notes in a professional-looking leatherette portfolio. He had a decent-looking pen. All these things, of course, cost money. I keep hearing Tom & Ray's warning over and over in my head, "When your mechanic buys a new boat-- beware."

While $3,925 probably won't buy a yacht of any self-respecting girth, it's certainly a start.

Brian, the second painter whom we invited into our shambolic home for the purposes of obtaining a quote, was the polar-opposite of Aaron, and I can only hope that his quote, which we have yet to receive, is the polar opposite of Aaron's.

Brian was 25 minutes late in arriving to our house, and he didn't call to let us know. I think that's because he doesn't own a cell-phone. I called him two weeks ago to set up a quote, and an elderly woman answered the phone. I left my information, and never heard back from him. A week ago, I ran into the woman who recommended Brian to me.

"Oh, yeah, that was probably his mother. I think she's a little, you know," she said. I looked at her and cocked my head. She contorted her face and stuck out her tongue, wobbling her noggin around like a bobblehead toy on a car dashboard.

"Ah," I said. "I'll try him again."

After meeting Brian, I have no doubt that he lives with his elderly, mentally-unstable mother. Brian is in his early fifties, with a weather-beaten face. He wore his paint like an accoutremont, like a pageant queen wears a sash or a salad wears dressing. His pants gave the impression that he was mauled by a horny tiger on his way over to our house, and his sweater was greedily feasted upon at the Moth Last Supper. This sweater was older than all of us in the room together combined, including the dog.

Brian doddered around our house, scribbling indecipherable scrawl in a black-and-white marble composition book-- the kind in which you wrote Susie's name over and over again in fifth grade. Ah, Susie.... I wonder if she paints houses.

I wasn't too impressed with Brian's presentation, but I'm certainly hoping that his thrift at the clothing store, or dumpster, translates into a more down-to-earth estimate.

After all-- I sure can't picture this fucking guy on a boat.