In the blog world – just like in real life – peer pressure works. A couple of weeks ago I commented to my friend Lance at My Blog Can Beat Up Your Blog  that we had a mutual blog friend, Tracy from Crazy As Normal. (Actually, what I told him was, “Tracy is in-real-life best friends with Sarah who is married to Chad who is in-real-life best friends with Dallas who is married to me!’) The comment was on his 100 Word Song Meme. He responded that I should try to do the meme. I declined. Lance is a real, published writer – we’re not in the same league. However, last week I got a tweet from Tracy, copied to Lance requesting I do the meme. They ganged up on me and it worked. For this exercise we have to listen to a song and then write 100 words – no more – inspired by the song.

Like I said, real writer stuff. It didn’t help that the song is cool and hip and nothing I had ever heard of because I am neither. But here it goes anyway. Tracy chose the song, “WHALE” by Yellow Ostrich. Listen first.

Gaining Sight

She knew everyone was looking at her. A girl her size shouldn’t be dieting.  Everyone told her she was too thin. Maybe, but she felt anything but thin.

She grabbed a can and saw her fingers. Translucent skin with pulsing veins, bright and blue. Skinny fingers. A tiny, frail wrist. They looked like they might break under the weight of the Slim Fast.

It was not the pretty she wanted to be.

She left the aisle and  filled her basket with food. Things she had denied herself for too long. Fruits, vegetables, bread, even chips and chocolate.

She felt beautiful.

HGTV is run by liars. They make you think that doing home renovation projects is easy and fun, but they’re not. They trick you by having attractive and clever people host their shows. They’re never sweaty or dirty or angry. They never curse at their spouses or break tools out of frustration. They just flutter through every project, swooping their hands and smiling – giving me the false sense that I can do anything.

Well I can’t. And I blame HGTV.

I’m a huge fan of House Hunters. I read that a lot of the show is staged and the families have usually made their decision before filming, but I don’t care. I like seeing different houses, especially on House Hunters International. I like seeing what you can get for the money in different cities and countries. I like trying to guess whether or not the couple will go over budget (they almost always do) for their dream house.

What I don’t like is when they see wallpaper and say, “oh, at least it’s an easy fix.” Ummm…WTF? Have they never removed wallpaper? Seriously, it never comes down like on the makeover shows, in one neat strip. I’ve removed lots of wallpaper. It has always involved scraping and scratching and swearing. It also has always involved patching the walls after the wallpaper is removed which means also adding texture to try to make it look not-crappy. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s so hard I think hanging wallpaper in the first place gives you bad house karma.

They say the same thing about flooring. “It’s no big deal, you just pull that up and put in new flooring.” As if it’s like changing a maxi pad. I pulled up the flooring in the basement last year. There was carpet, then carpet pad, then tiles, and some glue. It took half my life to complete the project – and I had help. By the end of it I wanted to burn the joint down.

Today I removed the caulk from our new bathroom. That’s right, our “new” bathroom. I don’t know what happened but the caulk got all cracked and yucky, even though it is only a few months old. The jerks on HGTV said it was “no big deal” that it was “easy.” All I had to do was remove the old caulk and put in new caulk. I figured it would take half an hour to remove the old stuff.

Martha Focker. It took the entire afternoon.

The freaking caulk tool cut into my hands. I had to yank and pull and scrape, all while squatting in the bathtub. I kept pulling too forcefully and punching the tiles. I probably have a broken hand, I definitely have a broken spirit. This project is going to take a week, at least. There’s no way I could actually re-caulk the tub today, my hands are so swollen and sore I could hardly grip my dinner fork.

It’s a good thing I drink wine from a box because there’s no way I could pop a cork right now. Screw you, HGTV.