Moose in the Kitchen

Part I: In Which I Demonstrate My Inability to Recognize or Locate a Scraper Thingy

Yesterday afternoon I pranced into the discount hardware store wearing pointy-toed high heels and a floaty little skirt that I really (really) shouldn’t be wearing on windy days. Why was I prancing? Because I am incapable of walking otherwise in pointy-toed shoes and I defy anyone who can. Why was I at a hardware store, much less wearing such a patently inappropriate outfit, you may be wondering? Well, my friends, it was not my fault. (It so rarely is.) I had no business at the hardware store and I understand this. I was merely following instructions. I was returning to my neighborhood after brunch with friends and a little detour to Sports Basement (where I was also inappropriately attired) for weights. I left $90 later, but with no weights. I did, however, gain myself a yoga mat, two pairs of dance pants to minimize the maximus, a box of cliff bars and a magazine. The magazine is research. Everything else is a vital step in my ongoing quest to lose the cookie weight. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

Hardware store. Prancing. No business doing either, especially in conjunction with one another. So I was calling the paint-stripper of the new house – the new house we have to be moved in to in a week and a half, no I have not yet begun to pack – for directions. I actually do know how to get to my own house, but not when Carnaval has hijacked the neighborhood. Upon foolishly calling for the status of current street closure, I tell him that I’m at Van Ness and 14th St, patiently awaiting the verdict. Reply: “Hey, you’re near Discount Builders. Can you stop on your way home?” It was foolish of me to say yes, but I have not done one iota’s worth of work on this house. We have friends who have painted walls, friends of friends who have painted walls, the dog has painted walls, and I haven’t done a damn thing. There was no wiggle room here. So I said yes.

Convoluted instructions got me within four blocks of the store. I scoot out of the car and prance down those four blocks and into the hardware store in my now rather uncomfortable pointy-toed shoes. I get implicit instructions to find a heat gun and a metal scraper thingy. I say thingy because I know what I’m talking about. It’s hardware store lingo. You wouldn’t understand. I ask the nice lady in the paint section. She tells me where to find the scraper thingy but that I’ll need to ask customer service for the heat gun. I wander to the proposed aisle and begin looking for the scraper thingy. I have no idea what a scraper thingy looks like, so read each and every label, on down the row, hoping that one of them will say “scraper thingy”. I find a scraper thingy. 27 different kinds of scraper thingies. I keep reading, but no labels say, “Hey, Moose. This is the one you want.” So I call for instructions on the appropriate size of scraper thingy. I am informed. I grab. Onward to customer service.

I can’t find customer service.

I wander in the pointy shoes until I find a very nice man to ask about the general location of customer service and if, perhaps, they have lattes there. No lattes, but the heat gun is a distinct possibility. He ushers me to an aisle filled with electrical appliances. Walking down the row, he says, “Tell me when you see one.”

“That implies I know what one looks like.”

He gives me a look, notes the shoes and obvious discomfort at being surrounded by wrenches, guides me toward customer service and leaves me there. He returns a few minutes later. He takes me to the same aisle, points out the heat guns and says, “There they are. They look just like big industrial hair dryers.”

I suppose I deserved that.

Part II: In Which I Use the Heat Gun and Lose One Whole Year of College and/or 67 IQ Points

Clad in my Barnard 2000 t-shirt, the one I only wear when doing something from which I might emerge slightly less than pristine, I got to use the heat gun. Those fumes will take the fight right out of a girl. I inhaled enough melting paint to knock off an entire year’s worth of brain cells. Most people kill off their intelligence with pot, LSD and heroin. I do it with home improvement projects. So who’s the smart one here?

After stripping off a century’s worth of paint from a glass front cabinet, revealing some very nice fixtures that haven’t been seen in at least 80 years and only cracking the glass twice (heat cracks glass! who knew?), I stumbled home. I made it up the stairs, only weaving into the wall twice. I collapsed in the entry way until I was fed enough Dutch Chocolate Straus Family Creamery organic ice cream to revive me.

I figured out where the couch was, where to find the Chex Mix and relearned to type. Greatly missing those brain cells while trying to remember how to spell “pointy.”