fine whine

Some days you just can't win. Today I had one of those experiences that sound like something a bad sitcom would pass off as humor, or perhaps be made into a movie by Ben Stiller. You know the kind of humor of which I speak, wherein a poor schlub keeps getting more and more in trouble from a small thing.

Well, it was my turn I guess. For the last month or so we've been coating some unfinished furniture with liquid polyurethane (a coat every couple days or so). Sunday we spent a little extra time trying to buy another can of the stuff, since our local Bargain Outlet's been out for a while due to some area man who is redoing every surface in his house with the stuff, apparently. Naturally on the way down to the other store I got turned around. Here I had been traveling south, made a right turn and then a left, and ended up northeast of my starting point. I guess I need to get one of those floaty compass things.

Anyway finally we procured the can, and today I managed to spill over half of it on the garage floor. Yeah, whoops. Mind you this is gooey stuff, like a brownish-clear paint. And I needed to step all over it to move the (now in peril) furniture away from the spreading ooze. And I needed to figure out a way to soak it up, other than just the cardboard that half of it spilled onto.

I tried sponging it up with my broken sponge brush, but I realized that wringing out the sponge got sponge bits and the other goop from the floor into the can and I didn't want to taint the stuff any more. So I soaked up what I could and splashed down some mineral spirits to clean up the rest.

What a smelly mess. So now I had a puddle of mineral spirits on the floor. What better way to soak that up than with some kitty litter? We'd coincidently had a bag lying around for some sort of freshness thing (it was for Jessica and I know better to ask a woman about freshness) so I figured I'd grab that from inside. Cleaning as much of the goop and dirt from my feet I leaned inside the house to grab the bag, only to tear the top off and spill some of that all over the hallway.

This could only get better, right? I couldn't find the household broom (or rather wasn't willing to track junk all over the carpet to retreive it) so I grabbed the two and a half foot wide one from the garage, and awkwardly swept up the errant litter. Mostly.

I dumped what I could recover on the mineral spirits, and added a liberal sprinkling from the bag. At this very moment it should be soaking up the remnants of the puddle, or at least be getting glued to the floor by the poly. Then I still needed to get rid of all my cleaning mess and the tainted cardboard, so I had to open the garage door to get to the trashbin. I'm still covered in dirty, sticky goop so I can't go back inside for some presentable clothes, so the whole neighboorhood (half of which seems to be biking laps in front of my house at the time) gets to see me in my shorts hanging low and the top elastic of my underwear. I'm not wearing a shirt because the garage has developed sauna-like temperatures as of late. If I had any free time then, you know, between the cleaning and stepping on the kitty litter, I'd probably been mildly embarrassed.

As it was, I was just frustrated. The feeling stuck and I was sort of nasty to Jessica and she back to me, and it wasn't until I threw Tati's Parade into the laserdisc player that I started to feel some levity again. It's a delightful show about, well, a show with some great moments. There's a bit with a magician and a sort-of heckler that is brilliant, and other little touches that show Tati's light humor genius. I enjoyed it immensly.

I only wish that the story of my evening were somehow more zany, as it really loses a lot in the re-telling. Oh well.