June 12, 2006

More Interior Desecration

Behold, if you dare, my new bathroom decor:

This is only partly my fault. My Most Beloved Aunt gave me a gift card to Bed, Bath & Beyond. I know she had only the noblest intentions, but really, she should know better. Giving me a gift card to Bed, Bath & Beyond is like giving Charlie Sheen a gift card to his favorite brothel: Something icky is bound to happen.

In this case the icky thing that happened was that I bought a shower curtain described by the boyfriend as "Kinda 'Brady Bunch,' don't you think?" And yes, I do think, but here's the thing: Everything in Bed, Bath & Beyond is "kinda 'Brady Bunch'" right now. The 70s are back and me, I'm through fighting it. I just don't have the energy. Besides: Trading warm tones for cool did not make things any less ugly in the 1980s. Because that's all that happened, you know--rust became berry, avocado became teal (do you remember? All the teal?), beige became peach or gray, depending, and brown became black. These colors still had the potential to add up to U-G-L-Y, especially if you went overboard on the teal. And every third restaurant, apartment complex, and strip mall in the Southwest went overboard on the teal in the 80s. Personally, I would have preferred more berry.

I am also not sure the rugs really go with the shower curtain, but the rugs that probably did go with the curtain were that pukey shade of gray-green they call "sage" and I was not feeling up for sage tonight; as for wheat, that's just phoning it in, to go for the wheat-colored rugs. Wheat-colored rugs match everything but white. No, I had to live on the edge and get the apple green, because the key thing about myself that I always forget when I'm in Bed, Bath & Beyond is that the reason I own so many pieces of black clothing in my wardrobe is that I can't match colors for shit.

In other news, I continue to be as dumb as a box of rocks. I spent half an hour cursing the shower rings that held up the previous shower curtain, the previous shower curtain that came in a perfectly decent non-Brady color scheme, because no matter how hard I pried and tugged at these rings, they would not snap apart. And these were the kind of shower curtain rings that snap together to hold the shower curtain UP and snap apart to take the shower curtain DOWN. They were not rocket science, these shower rings. Snap together, snap apart. Except that for some reason they would not snap apart no matter what.

I blamed the hard water we have here for leaving mineral deposits that had clearly built up and fused these stupid rotten shower curtain rings together permanently, apparently. What else could explain this?

But when after what seemed like hours I finally broke my second or third ring open and my boyfriend cheered, "Great, only seven more to go!"--that, I think, is when I just plain lost my shit and started quoting from that scene in Vacation, you know the one, the one in which Chevy Chase tells his family that they are going to have so much fucking fun at Walley World that they are going to be whistling "Zippity-Doo-Dah" out of their etceteras--only, compared to me, Chevy was a pretty mellow guy in that scene.

I had really had it with those rings, is what I'm saying.

Finally we took down the entire rod and slid the entire curtain-and-liner set off of it and resumed trying to pry these miserable bits of plastic apart. After screaming every obscenity I knew and a couple I made up specially for the occasion at one of the rings, I shrieked at my boyfriend, "Lookit this! Lookit this, the little fucking bastard has the nerve to WIGGLE at me! It won't come apart, oh, NO, but it'll damn sure wiggle at me! It's fucking taunting me, this fucking thing! It's--"

CLICK.

It turned out all you had to do to these shower rings was twist them ever so slightly, just the barest, neatest little flick of the wrist, and apart them came with no resistance whatsoever. I brute-forced FIVE OF THEM before finding this out. I don't know whether to cheer my amazing upper body strength or bemoan my advancing senility.

Posted by Ilyka at June 12, 2006 10:08 PM in navel gazing
Comments

We should found a Buyer's Remorse Hall of Fame. I'd be happy to donate my $80 Shirt of Lamentation.

Posted by: Hubris at June 13, 2006 05:19 AM

Shirt of Lamentation? I have to see this thing! Post a picture of it somewhere and send me a link!

Posted by: ilyka at June 13, 2006 11:28 AM

I tossed it out because it made me angry.

However, to make up for that I'll trade a pic of me in my pleather pants (the purchase of which, strangely, I don't regret) once I'm done moving this week. Personally, I spell sexy F-A-U-X L-E-A-T-H-E-R.

Posted by: Hubris at June 13, 2006 11:49 AM

Didn't you have an issue with a slipcover in a somewhat similar shade? Maybe you should swear off rusty red?
Why doesn't ANYONE make a shower curtain that doesn't look like shit, anyway? I have yet to find one that looks right. Anywhere, any price, they all look like crap.
I want waterproof matchstick blinds, or something like that, but they'd make it out of shiny plastic and it would SUCK. Next house: tinted glass. No more shower curtains!

Posted by: Beth at June 13, 2006 11:59 AM

BTW, your mu.nu email is bouncing. :-(

Posted by: Beth at June 13, 2006 12:05 PM

I'd never been to a Bed Bath Beyond till I visited my parents in St George in January. Dang!! I drove cushions home all the way to Monterey. I could get in some serious trouble in that store and am happy beyond belief we don't have one in Monterey!

Posted by: Ith at June 14, 2006 12:00 PM

Damn, that's what my bathroom looked like before the previous owners moved out and I replaced the shower curtain and had the walls repainted.

Posted by: Moebius Stripper at June 14, 2006 02:36 PM
before the previous owners moved out and I replaced the shower curtain and had the walls repainted.

Oh, that hurts.

If this weren't an apartment, and I could have had the walls repainted, this disaster might never have happened. But the blue/silver/seafoam/white shower curtain I had previously was not working at all with the belligerent shade of putty they've painted the walls here.

I am just going to refer to it from now on as My Very Brady Bathroom and try to move on from this without any more interference from Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Posted by: ilyka at June 14, 2006 05:44 PM