My knowledge of car repair is minimal. I can replace a brake light, fill some fluids, jump a battery and check my oil. If I am really motivated and I have all of the right tools I can change a tire, but usually I opt to call AAA or drive to the nearest service station. That's about it. Around the house I can screw things in or maybe assemble something from Target, but my services are limited. I do have experience caulking, painting and fixing garbage disposals, but in the handyman world that is equivalent to an accountant being able to change the batteries in an calculator or a barber changing the blade on his razor. Have we had enough analogies for the day? Good.
My biggest regret in life, other than wasting 4 years and $50 grand on college when I could have just learned a trade and got a city job, is being a shitheads from the ages of 8-16, as most kids are, and refusing to let my dad teach me how to fix things around the house or take care of my own car. He tried, I just wasn't interested, and he was too nice a guy to make me do it anyway. Damn.
Today I was asked to clean the mold and soap scum from our apartment. As I have mentioned, our apartment sucks. The landlord lives in Ireland, or California, or maybe Scotland- I literally don't know at this point. Shit brakes all the time and there is still scum from the last three tenants in the deepest of corners. The most disgusting of which is the years of dog hair matted in to the front hallway stairs. I have tried everything short of traveling through time to shoot the dog's mother (time travel reference #2) to get it out. Nothing works. I would love to just replace the carpet, but if I had the money to lay carpet on a stairway I'd have the money to not live here, so it stays. Have I mentioned that I hate dog people?
Anyway, since I was already asked to clean the mold, and Av was with Monica's parents at the aquarium today (LUCKY!), I figured I'd clean the whole house. Despite my general idiocy when it comes to skill crafts, I am an excellent cleaner. If it weren't for my inevitable onset of laziness I feel like I could run with those Spanish ladies in the yellow Ford Focus who clean houses for hire.
I proceeded to dominate the kitchen, living room and both hallways, even picking out the 4-year-old (at least) dog hair from the stairs with my own latex-glove clad hands, thinking the entire time "damn, it smells like I have a condom on my hand." The mold removal? Well, the mold removal was a different story. Let me first start by saying that the mold is gone. The bathroom is immaculate and the soap scum is a distant memory. It was not an easy road, though.
My method of cleaning was a scum/ mold removal product called "Mean Green." The label simply has two evil, mean looking eyes staring at you. I tried to find a picture, but a Google search for 'Mean Green' gives you, in order, a green computer drawing of a falcon, some weed and a kid dressed in combat gear. I am sure if I kept going or changed my search a bit I could find it, but that hearkens back to the whole 'laziness' thing, probably due, in part, to my relationship with the item featured in the second Google search result.
Anyway, the Mean Green worked fantastically on the bathtub, tile and floor, leaving me with only a few spots on the ceiling to tend to. This is where things went wrong. The product is used in a spray bottle, so getting it on the ceiling was tough. I put on a pair of Maui Jim Sport sunglasses (won in a sales contest at the now defunct Athlete's Corner, which my resume says I was once an assistant manager at, thank you very much) and my favorite t-shirt, also won in a sales contest at the same store,( this time for selling Mizzuno running shoes. I rule), and I started to spray.
Needless to say, my favorite shirt is now blue with a million pink spots all over the sides, shoulders and back, and I have probably shaved a few days off of my life with the whole bleach ingestion thing.
*Side note. Bleach issues always make me think of this kid I went to high school with named Chris. The story is tragic. Older brother makes younger brother drink bleach as a funny trick when both are too young to know any better. Younger brother becomes retarded. But Chris wasn't really retarded, he was just really, really, really sllllllllloooooowwwwwww. Nicest kid you will ever meet in you entire life. Life's aspiration to work at Price Chopper (Western Mass represent!) and save $1,000. As of three years ago, which was the last time I was at the Pittsfield Price Chopper, he still worked there. I hope his bank account reflects that. In 11th grade he had a teacher's aid who looked exactly like a character from the TV show 'Dinosaurs.'
I want to make it absolutely clear, I am not making fun of Chris. He was a great kid who got a bad deal in life and made the best of it, whether he is aware of it or not. From my end, I have been terrified of bleach for 15 years because of it.For all of the bleach I ingested I still feel fine, aside from a weird taste in my mouth, so it is probably good. What wasn't fine was my bathroom walls, which looked like someone spilled white paint all over them from above. See, my bathroom walls are the same random peach color as the rest of my place, except for where the random peach color isn't, which is painted a sort of whitish pink color. In some rooms there are two-tone walls. Tough deal. Anyway, I had no idea how to prevent the Mean Green from dripping down the walls, so it was just a series of streaks. Luckily for me, I have, as most apartments do, a random paint closet that features just the right shade of peach. I was too lazy, however, to get a roller from the store, so I just used a brush and spot-painted it. It looks ok, not great, but it is better than it was before. Plus, it isn't my house, so who cares?
Yeah. I don't do much.
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