Showed up at work in full costume, and all my coworkers had forgotten it was Halloween.
By now I have learned that it is more embarrassing being the only person wearing a sad novelty headband than it is to be the only person fully kitted out in a head-to-toe costume. I have commandeered the candy bucket, and everyone is going to have a happy Halloween or they’ll get the pointy end of my shoe.
This flower kicked my butt. I wasted a lot of paint and wiped out hours of work before getting a halfway decent likeness of it. The highlights make me so mad, because I really dislike high-chroma color but it was there, and I couldn't make myself not paint it that way.
Should have asked for a different color when my mother texted me from the Safeway flower section after listening to me rant about the Dutch tulip mania over Sunday dinner. Yellow tulips wouldn't have tricked me into wasting so much $25/tube cadmium. A parrot tulip would be even better, but the pacific islands aren’t exactly a hotbed of bulb trading. Never going to be a 17th century Dutch master at this rate.
Better stick to painting cheesecake.
In the middle of the night, a tea set and a metal food scale leaped off the fridge and smashed all over the floor, causing us to jump straight up out of bed and run into the kitchen. My heart DID NOT LIKE THIS. It took 4 tries to get back into bed and lay down, because I kept having to kneel and put my forehead on the floor to stop from fainting. It's a barfy, cold, muffle-eared feeling that I hate a lot. "If I wake up dead I'm going to be so pissed. Killed by a teacup." And whichever cat was exploring the top of the fridge at 12:30am.
Still got sent to the hospital for an EKG and an echocardiogram, though.
It’s uncomfortable admitting to having an “underlying health issue”, because then if you die people act like you’re okay with being dead. Like if your brakes squeak, then nobody should feel bad when someone runs you off the road and your brakes fail and you crash into a tree and your car explodes. Ah, but she had those underlying brake issues, it was probably to be expected. Well, I do not expect to drop dead of a minor heart murmur, and I am not okay with it. I’m going to live to be 100 years old, powered by gristle and spite.
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And because I don’t want that to be the last thing I talk about, here I am posing for reference pictures for an illustration I completely ruined.
Dressing up is fun but also depressing, because fancy clothes look so much better than work clothes, and you can't just walk around everywhere with steel undergarments and stage lighting. Unfair.
My spacesuit was lost in the mail, and it wasn't even coming from space. It was coming from Texas. This is why we haven't colonized Mars yet, folks.
While browsing a replacement, I discovered I had already been outmaneuvered by a costume designer channeling Frank Frazetta.
I can’t compete with that kind of romance. Accepted the refund and gave up. Sat at work feeling bummed about no longer having a shiny silver illustration prop/pandemic-appropriate workplace costume to look forward to, and then noticed that the book I was processing had a portrait of my very own face on the cover.
Damn it, Ben, not again.
A few years ago, I tried one of those popular apps that pairs you with your celebrity twin, and it gave me Benjamin Franklin.
Later, I tried the gender-swapping app to see what I would look like as a man, and it turned me into an alcoholic Ben Franklin, with bloodshot eyes and stubble.I tried the historical painting app. BEN FRANKLIN.
So I ordered a Benjamin Franklin costume.
All the classic Ben Franklin poses: strike me, lightning; I can’t see that far without my spectacles; I forgot my cravat and knickers
(It should be said that I am not a descendant of Benjamin Franklin, whatever our foreheads and noses say. While Ben was busy doing "Nothing in this Way of Use to Mankind", my 22 year-old ancestor was sitting in a British prison cell for stealing books. 250 years and 3 generations of librarians later, we are still working off that blood debt. Thanks, Willie.)
Rescuer to the rescue
The next day, I rescued a puppy locked in a hot car, using the "LADY, YOU LOCKED YOUR PUPPY IN THE CAR, OPEN IT UP RIGHT NOW AND NEVER DO THAT AGAIN" rescue method. So she opened the door and left her kid in the car with the puppy. I was giving the puppy a bowl of water and talking to the kid about how not to murder his dog when the lady finished printing her restraining order paperwork and came running out of the library, just in time for her abusive husband to arrive on foot, screaming. The guy’s friend suddenly drove up and boxed her car in with his truck so she couldn’t escape, then thought better of it when he saw me calling the police. He sulkily moved his truck, she sped away with the screaming man chasing her car, and I got to spend the rest of the afternoon writing incident reports.
After all that, I went home, made dinner, heard a noise, and walked out the back door to find myself face-to-face with a stranger sneaking through the enclosed yard. The man tried to wave casually and stroll along to the exit, but I stopped him for an explanation. Turns out I am the kind of person who will confront a prowler/ax murderer armed only with a taco NOTHING. I thought I was holding a taco, but review of the security footage shows I left it in the kitchen. I had the higher ground, though, and could have leaped on him like a wolverine.
Sadly not dressed as Benjamin Franklin
The prowler was just a neighbor who knocked something off his chicken coop into our yard and then couldn't climb back over the fence. While I was using mom-voice on the poor guy, Mike was hiding in the basement with a beer, waiting for me to finish dealing with whatever was happening upstairs.
“If you were in trouble, I would have run up and hit him with something."
"Your beer?"
"No.” (He collects nice beer glasses.) “With, like, a free weight."
I would have enjoyed seeing that.
Next time.
Today I took a break from faces and painted a flower. I am almost certain it is a chrysanthemum. On the packet it just said “produce”.
Chrysanthemums are my birth flower, so I have always felt sympathy for them. They're a bit weird looking and unpopular, as flowers go. They have lovely leaves, though.
This means I have an excuse to buy props.
I browsed gowns and corsets and historic reenactment sites, but what I bought was a pair of werewolf hands and a space suit.
The space suit arrives tomorrow. Who thinks romance and does not immediately think space werewolves, I ask you?
Exactly. Nobody.
