The Kitchen Shrink (16 page)

I took a deep breath. Just in time for another go-around with Elgin about my kitchen. Now, he’s a bitch.

See, in theory, I’m all for reducing, reusing and recycling. However, in practice, I hate those flickering fluorescent gas station looking lights. But, alright. We put them in the track lighting in my kitchen and made a big deal of reducing my carbon footprint and going green. The latest hitch was the backsplash. Above my stove and below my teal cabinets, a two-foot by ten-foot space that was not going to be painted red, was an area primed for the backsplash. There are all types of gorgeous ideas for backsplashes. Mosaic tiles, subway tiles, and hey, here’s an idea, how about granite? But, no. Elgin wanted extra credit for recycling.

“We can take those fugly china dishes of yours, smash ‘em, and use them as tile.”

I’m sure he was just trying to get a rise out of me; it just wasn’t that sort of kitchen. I also think he was softening me up so once I was duly horrified by that notion he could slide right in with his rescue plan.

He took a sip of his Dr. Pepper then tried to squish the empty can in his hand. He couldn’t do it. I grabbed it from him, threw it on the floor and stomped it with my foot. “There. What’s your evil plan now?”

He nodded, as if I were playing right into his scheme. “Thank you. Do you realize recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run your TV for 3 hours?”

“I am not gluing smashed Dr. Pepper cans to my kitchen walls.”

He laughed. “No, no, no. There are actually recycled aluminum tiles we can use.”

“Elgin. Remember when I was worried this would look like Jane Jetson’s kitchen? Well, I was wrong. The cabinets are great. The paint sucks. But adding aluminum tiles will make it look like the bridge of the starship Enterprise. “You’ve taken a clean contemporary look and shot it off into the apocalypse,” I tried to reason. Or complain.

Elgin put up a good fight, all through the tile store. “I drive a Prius,” he bragged. Some of the recycled metal and aluminum tiles were cool; they just didn’t fit with my kitchen. As if the red paint did. Be strong, I told myself as I clenched my fist.

“Just because you drive a Prius doesn’t mean I need to tile my kitchen in tin cans.”

He stomped off in front of me.

“It doesn’t automatically make you a nice person, either,” I called out. “Is there anyone more smug than Prius drivers?”

I looked over and Dustin, who had been tailing me with the boom mic. He was laughing and when he saw me look, jerked his head toward Sam.

“Oops,” I said, covering my mouth.

Sam stopped and gave his camera to his assistant. “I have an electric car, not a Prius...”

“Here we go,” Dustin said.

“It’s cool,” Sam said.

“Is that right?” I said in a droning voice. “You don’t say.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with details. I’ll give you a ride sometime and you can see for yourself.”

Wee! I barely had time to formulate a complete image of me, for some strange reason wearing an Isadora Duncan scarf sitting next to Sam in his cute little car...

“Lisby. Snap, snap.” Elgin actually snapped his fingers at me to catch up.

Sam refocused the camera on us and nodded at me. “Carry on.”

Our tile expert was a woman with snapping brown eyes, and hands that looked like they’ve been put to good use. Her name was Jan, according to her badge, which was turned upside down. Elgin, of course, kept calling her Naj. She watched Elgin prance around and choose his silvery tile set and then asked me, “Would you like to see something else?”

“Yes, please!”

I followed her over to an incredible array of beautifully colored tiles. “These are 100% recycled glass tiles,” she said. “You can get any size, from one inch square to six inches for your backsplash.”

I ran my fingers over the cool polished stones.

She watched me. “Tiling comes from the latin ‘tessella’ which means small cube-shaped pieces of clay, stone or glass. The blue pigments were the rarest, and in ancient times, found only in affluent homes.”

“As if I didn’t need another reason to like these better,” I told her. “But the blue really won’t work with my cabinets.” I followed her down the array of colors.

“Greens are an excellent reflection of nature,” she said. “They can be soothing and help stimulate conversation. It’s even said green environments promote digestion, so maybe your teal cabinets are on the mark for your kitchen.”

“Only if she doesn’t cook,” Elgin said.

The greens were gorgeous, but too conflicting with the color of the cabinets. Finally she showed me a soft, almost translucent greenish-blue sea glass. I elbowed Elgin who held up a sample of a soft, opaque aqua. It was gorgeous, and looked like it would even be able to mute some of the overpowering teal color of the cabinets. Set above the granite counter, which was a dark black and gray, with streaks of burgundy, Elgin called it ‘pome-granite’, the sea glass seemed to be the perfect choice.

Elgin agreed by taking over and acting like it was his vision all along. “I knew that we needed a basic element here, something subdued, but organic, to tie it all together.”

“Is that right?” I asked him. “You don’t say?”

I saw Sam change camera angles and smile at me.

Elgin chose the one-inch size tiles, and then actually kissed Naj on her cheek when they had them in stock, in face-mounted sheets. I was so glad we weren’t going to be doing any fancy designs.

The crew showed me how to apply the adhesive, lay the sheets, and use the spacers to keep the tiles even. A project like this was so fun to tackle, especially with my experts standing there and handing me the tiles and telling me where to put them and how to do it. The carpenters cut all the tile pieces that needed to be fitted into the edges for me, but it was a start. I watched how they did it, and thought I might be able to do that by myself, someday. It didn’t take long to get the tiles in place, ready to be grouted.

        There is something so soothing and productive about grouting. What is it about filling in cracks and crevices with a muddy compound? I swooshed my spatula back and forth, like frosting a cake, covering the tiles in off-white goop. The workers checked and leveled my applications, but it was pretty much my baby. I could do this. Of course, I wasn’t doing anything intricate, just slinging on the glop. Once all the grout was on, sloppy, covered and mortared into place, we waited for about twenty minutes. I took a big sponge, and feeling like I was on an episode of Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie, I worked magic as I swiped off the tiles, revealing the soft-muted clean, slightly rounded smooth glass.

“Not bad,” Elgin said.

If you looked at my cabinets with the new backsplash, it was very pretty and soothing. But if your peripheral vision happened to stray one iota, watch out. I shrieked, like I did every time to annoy Elgin when I caught sight of the vicious red walls, and pretended to pull a knife out of my eye.

“It’s not too late, Elgin,” I begged him. “Please. Let’s repaint. Any other color.” He merely ran his hand over the slaughtered walls and beamed as if he was a proud mother, smoothing the hair over her child’s large red ears.

I hate my kids on Tuesdays. It was their early day at school, as if being all present and accounted for on normal days at a normal time was an easy feat. They were never ready, always needed to print something out even though I told them a thousand times that the printer will always run out of ink when they are in a hurry, and they always waited until Tuesday morning to present me with a 6 page scantron parent survey.

Ryan could never find a pen, oh, gee, maybe one was hidden in his pant pockets, for old times sake. Again. Good times, good times. I had finally learned my lesson and washed his clothes alone. As for pairing his socks, he single-handedly started a new trend of mismatched socks, maybe hoping it would be as big as sagging pants one day. Hmm, come to think of it, maybe that trend was started by some over-worked put-upon thrifty mom who had gotten a great deal on jeans, that just wouldn’t fit her son for a few more years and he decided to ‘cool it up’ with sagging. I did try to limit my nagging on Tuesday mornings, for my own blood pressure’s sake. But this morning, I couldn’t help myself.

“Guess what I found in the dryer this morning, Ryan?”

“A pen,” he said, looking like even he couldn’t believe how lame he was.

“Nope.”

“Money?” he asked.

“You wish.”

He thought and then started. “Chapstick? Sorry.”

“Guess again.”

“Gum?”

I shook my head. His list of items left in his pants pockets was growing by the load. I really was creating a terrible future husband for some poor girl.

“Cookies?”

“Negative.”

“Shakespeare play?”

“No. I paid the fine on that, though.”

“Thanks.” He thought a little harder. “Fireworks?”

“No, that was last month.”

“I give up,” he said.

He had loved pockets since he was a baby and had them crammed with everything from bits of string to rocks. I looked at my nearly six foot tall absentminded adorable annoying son, and shot off yet another spiritual email to the universe entitled “please let him be OK.” The worry for him nearly knocked me sideways.

“Ryan, how hard is it to empty your pockets before you put your clothes in the hamper?” I held up his calculator.

“Sorry,” he said quietly.

“Good one,” Nicole mocked. “How stupid.”

“Shut up or I’ll tell mom what you and your friend were doing…”

Nicole punched him with all her might and they were off. Screaming, yelling, accusing, and not ready for school, all before 7:00am on a Tuesday morning.

“Stop it,” I tried to referee.

“He started it,” she said, her voice so high-pitched I think it even scared her.

“You’re not much better,” I said to Nicole who had a habit of cleaning her room by throwing everything into laundry baskets.

“I washed your clothes, too.”

“Thank you,” she tried to say sweetly but that didn’t work since it came out as one syllable.

“Yeah, your school ID was in the laundry basket and I didn’t know and ended up washing and drying that, too.”

“Sorry.”

“Come on, you guys. Help a mother out.” I looked at the clock. “Oh, no, you’re going to be late. You have to get going.” I ran into the kitchen. “Who wants a granola bar?” My kids never ate, which drove me crazy, especially since breakfast was my number one reason for getting up in the morning. The door slammed, leaving me to fume in silence.

I went back upstairs to Nicole’s room and tried to clean up. She is such a pack rat. A family therapist told me as long as there is nothing unhygienic in there to leave her alone. But I couldn’t help myself. Once a week, or at least month, I’d try to sort the piles of clothes, homework, perfume, shoes, boots, soda cans, DVDs, paper plates, and shopping bags that obliterated the fact that she really did have carpet in her room. I had to hurry because Elgin was sending me to a spa for the works.

I reached for one more Victoria’s Secret bag smashed under Nicole’s bed and folded it up to put inside the others. There was something still inside. Great. Probably a $50 bra she conned her dad into buying for her that she has yet to wear. It’s pretty bad when your fifteen-year-old daughter has chi-chier lingerie than you do. In a better size. I stuck my hand in and came up with yet another bag. A plastic bag. This one contained a dried out green bud. I could not believe it. I sat on her bed and opened the bag to smell. Yep. Pot. That’s what it was alright. I texted Nicole’s cell phone. ‘You are busted.’ There. That will drive her crazy all day. And then I called Brett. He had the kids tonight, and while I usually tried not to pull the ol’ ‘wait ‘til your father gets home’ method of parenting, he could handle this, much better than I.

“Aw, it’s just weed, Lisby. It’s probably not even hers,” said Mr. Liberal. “I’ll talk to her about it. Don’t worry.” I slammed the phone down on him, I was so angry. I wanted threats and consequences, resulting in weeping remorse from my daughter. I took the stash into my bedroom, hid it in my nightstand, and got ready for my spa appointment.

Sam and Dustin drove me to Solana Beach for my day-o-beauty at Spa ChaCha. “Can’t you just shoot the after?” I tried to wheedle Sam, picturing images of me sitting in a robe that could also double as a car cover, with no makeup, tin foil lining my head as I looked like the exact opposite of the woman in all the spa ads.

“Lisby, everything I shoot is gorgeous,” Sam told me. “ Especially when I have such a photogenic subject.”

“Good one,” I said, thinking how cute he was and how happy I should be for Daria. I had finally figured it out. Daria and Sam were dating. They had to be! Every time she came over to my house, I’d catch them whispering together. My best friend didn’t even have the heart to tell me. Which told me loads. She must be head over heels in love with him if she was keeping this secret all to herself so as not to jinx anything. I’m sure I would do the same. Plus, she’s been mysteriously missing on the nights we usually watch Must-See TV. Mid-week dating. Imagine! I made myself smile, thinking that would help mask the jealousy I was feeling. It didn’t work. In fact, I would need more than cucumber rounds to cover my green-eyed monster.

While Sam and Dustin were parking and getting their gear together, I went into the spa, retrieved my robe from Omar the tent maker and hit the chair for highlights. I refused to let Sam shoot my eyebrow shaping, especially since I had my upper lip waxed too. I’m sure Sam and his camera never noticed the bright red missing strip of skin above my lips. Since it was a medical spa, Elgin also signed me up for a Retin-A facial and Botox. Free Botox. I was truly blessed. My permanent scowl, while effective in dealing with teenagers, made me look like I was in a snit all the time, even while I was oh, say, swilling a chilled-to-perfection glass of vino or eating a Snicker’s bar in secret, or on occasion, indulging in both at the same time.