Day Ten, Project Three: Stripping By Numbers

I was awakened bright and early this morning by the gentle tickle of a giant spider crawling on my forehead.

This does not bode well…

I smashed him and threw him across the room, stripped my pyjamas off and freaked out for a while, then got my three hours of work and one of exercise out of the way. After all that, I tried to put on “Car Talk” to shower by, only to discover that it’s a pledge weekend on NPR.

Ja-cob Fugger!

At Blowe’s I damn near bought the variety-pack of steel wool by mistake, but realized it just in time and ran back to switch it off. Turns out they didn’t have the one I really wanted, so I got the coarsest kind. I’m sure it will be fine. [Lo and behold: for once, it was.]

Then I spent an hour and $80 in the supermarket buying, um, I guess mostly toilet paper? Sheesh. I had a whole grocery list ready but had to cross half of it off because the bills came in the mail today. Johnny gave me xyz yesterday and I did the math and planned to spend x on groceries, y on bills, and put z in the Furnace Fund. But the AmEx yearly membership came due this month (it went up, too; I didn’t know it was gonna do that), and the first electric bill came that reflects the new (to us, and hopefully temporary) water heater. Pfft, there went z. And so now I’m leaving the grocery store without my IPA, because if I hope to heat my house this winter I have to subtract from x or else end up with i…

I did the (final, forgotten) heat-gun part this morning while listening to the snippets of “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” that they played between the pledge drives (which “Wait Wait” actually airs at 12:00, so I guess it wasn’t morning). Now I’m racing to get the groceries in and the stripping crap set up before “This American Life” gets underway. Some race. 20 rolls of toilet paper, 10 yogurts and a watermelon, and all the stripping crap is where I left it yesterday. Ta da! I’m finished just in time -- my show is starting!

Shins. I’ve heard this one. Oh well, too late to change it now: I’m up to my wrists in caustic chemicals and metal shavings.

I get twenty minutes into the job and realize I forgot to buy the gloves. Nerts. Actually, I didn’t honestly forget so much as cross them off the list because I couldn’t remember anymore why they were so important (and Totino’s pizza rolls were on sale for a dollar: priorities) -- but I remember now. Boy, do I. I know why I had so many lefties and no righties, too:

5F5 + rubber gloves + #3 coarse steel wool = this:

Just call me the little match girl. Or Jack the Ripper. (Yeah, the red stuff isn’t blood, but I won’t go into that whole story until we see how the door turns out.)

Tomorrow: staining!

Day Ten: Accomplished
Total Time: Not counting Blowe’s, then all of “This Life” and really only like a fraction of “Wait Wait” because the pledge drive drove me nuts -- 70 minutes.
Total Cost: $3.86 for steel wool.
Waking Up With Spiders Crawling On Your Forehead: Psychasthenic (look it up).