Tag Archives: vanity

One thirty down and I have some thoughts…

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It’s been just about a year since I made the conscious decision to get my weight down towards something that wouldn’t trigger such a serious lecture every time I walked into a doctor’s office. Realizing that I was, in fact, both destructible and well past the demographic definition of middle-age gave me a level of motivation I’d never had before. Score one for the motivating power of fear and self-preservation. 

In any case, dropping 130 pounds over the last year hasn’t exactly been an adventure. I’m agitated every day about the foods – and lifestyle – I had to give up in order to achieve what would be easy to assume was purely a vanity exercise. I won’t pretend I don’t have my vanities, but none of them have ever been tied to my appearance, which is probably for the best.

I’m sure when I wander back to my doctor for my next scheduled checkup, he’ll make all the appropriate approving noises. My most recent bloodwork came back with significantly marked improvements over its historic baseline. Even if we haven’t gotten to the root causes of what was causing my heart to ramp up to a sprint of its own accord, it’s hard to argue against my innards being healthier than they were a year ago. 

What no one mentioned as they encouraged me through this process, though, was all the minor annoyances that would accompany this process. I just did my second cull of the clothes hanging in my closet and came to the unhappy realization that I only have eight shirts and two pair of pants that fit now. The rest – some of my favorite shirts mind you – are now comically oversized on my new frame. 

I’m going to have to take some time during this little Independence Week vacation for clothes shopping. I spent time doing that already this spring. This means I’ve spent more time shopping for clothes in the last three months than I have in the last three years. In fact, it will probably account for more time than I’ve spent shopping in the last decade.

I used to know the brands I liked and the appropriate sizes. It was easy enough finding them online and reordering as needed. Now, every damned shirt is a roll of the dice. It’s an enormous pain in the ass and feels a little bit like adding insult to injury. Sure, I’ll do it because wandering around naked is frowned upon by western civilization (and winter is coming), but there’s no power in heaven or earth than can make me enjoy the process. 

The Bathroom Report: Day 47

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It’s been a busy week. Some of that urgency is probably driven by the fact that the guy leading the crew here is due to leave for vacation this time next week. Part of it, I’m sure, is that with the tile done, the pace with which things fall into place naturally increases. Maybe it’s not a sprint to the finish, but it’s better than the last few weeks which have felt like limping towards an ending with one leg mangled in a bear trap.

The progress summary for this week includes all tile being in and grouted, the vanity, top, and sinks are in place, mirrors have been dropped off for framing, and there’s been some minor prep done for painting. The long poles that remain look like setting the toilet, adding in fixtures, paint, putting shelving back in the closet, and setting the shower glass. That last bit will surely drive this project well past day 60 even if all the rest does happen to be finished by the end of next week… though I obviously have my doubts about hitting that mark.

No week is complete without a snag, of course. This week’s issue is the vanity. The finish that leaned towards brown in samples has a decidedly reddish hue in person. I selected it and the top originally because it looked like they would pick up the brown tones in the shower tile. As it turns out, the tile sample we looked at may have had loads of brown in sample size, but it leans decidedly gray in bulk, so I’ve got this very nice vanity that doesn’t really blend with anything. I’m at a complete loss to figure out how the samples looked so good together only to end up this off base. And yes, I even double-checked invoices and labels against the samples to make sure it was even the right product. 

As it sits, it looks like the vanity and top were picked in seclusion from the shower and floor tiles. It’s an unsettling look. So now I’m launching deep discussions with the designer and probably the painting subcontractor on what’s the best way to fix it. Some of it can probably be mitigated by whatever paint eventually ends up on the walls. There’s also the option of re-staining or painting the cabinets to bring them more in line. The nuclear option, and one that’s still very much on the table, is just living with it until something in a new and more harmonious finish can be ordered, built, and shipped in. I know what direction I’m leaning, but it’s probably not a decision I’ll want to finalize until the rest of the bits and pieces are laid in. It seems like every time a new element gets introduced all the others look vaguely different. I’d like to avoid, if possible, creating a do loop of calling for new cabinetry, tops, and paint that carries on infinitely into the future. I’d also prefer not to spend any additional big tranches of cash until I know with more precision what exactly needs changed to make it all hang together. 

As we close the week, the wheels feel like they’ve come a bit off. It’s not an ideal note on which to end the week, but it’s exactly why I built in a 15% slush fund into the budget. Spending the money honestly doesn’t feel like the worst of it. That dubious distinction belongs to the knowledge that getting it sorted will add more time to a project I desperately hoped was drawing towards an end.

Slice and dice…

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Over the last three months or so, I’ve been spending time with a local dermatologist. Fortunately, he’s not treating me for anything traumatic or catching, but we’re working through a pretty large number of skin tags that have annoyed me for years, but that I’ve never had the time, inclination, or, frankly, the ready cash to do much about. BlueCross is very clear that it’s the kind of thing they consider cosmetic, so anything done along these lines has to be fully out of pocket.

I would tell you that I’m not vain, but that’s obviously not entirely true. I have plenty of vanities, they’re just generally not the physical kind. Whatever else it may be, I’ve long considered my body just the meat suit responsible for hauling my brain around from Point A to Point B. As long as it’s managing to get that job done, it’s good enough. These little tags we’re working on now were starting to be an issue even in my general disinterest. 

So, for the last three appointments, we’ve been trying to kill them with blistering cold. That has met with some limited success. Looking at the progress to date, the doc wasn’t happy – and in honesty nether was I. So, today was the last round of that approach. In three or four weeks, instead of the fancy cryo gun, we’ll be going with the more old-fashioned lidocaine and razor blade approach. As I understand it, where freezing is more akin to using a smart bomb, the razor is more like stepping up to wholesale carpet bombing.

Just now, well into this process, I’m willing increase the pain threshold in exchange for a shorter duration of effort. Sometime towards the end of June, I guess I’ll subject myself to a bit of slice and dice for purely cosmetic purposes. It turns out, my vanity isn’t as well controlled as I liked to imagine. 

Fifty days…

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There are a grand total of 50 working days between me and kicking off a what I affectionately think of as The Greatest Shitshow on Earth. Fifty days sounds like a fair amount of time. Maybe it should. The reality, in the belly of the one of the world’s great bureaucratic organizations, though, is that 50 days is almost nothing. It’s closer to the time it takes to order and receive supplies than it is to what it takes to deliver a major project.

It’s fifty days to start, two more to do the thing, and a grand total of fifty two more days before this particular piece of work slips astern. It means I’m going to wake up every morning for the next fifty two days a little bit more annoyed than I was on the previous morning. It’s possible that at some point during this endless march of days, my eyes will physically roll right out of my skull.

I’d love to tell you it’s all for a good cause or that the return on investment makes the sheer weight of aggravation somehow worth it. I can’t and it isn’t. The whole thing is a fucking vanity exercise devised and propagated by echelons higher than reality. Look, I’ll go whatever way someone points me, and deliver whatever they ask for as best I can, but don’t ever expect me to pretend it’s an exciting opportunity to do great things. It’s just one more dumbass thing I’m doing to stay off the breadline.

Present at the Creation…

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In 1969 Dean Acheson published a memoir of his career at the State Department that covered his entry as an assistant secretary and ending with his elevation to Secretary during the second Truman administration. Serving from 1941-53, he saw the dawn of the modern political age. Empires that spanned three centuries and all corners of the globe crumbled in the wake of a war that left Europe unable to even feed itself, let alone meet its manufacturing and financial needs. Into this breach stepped the United States in the form of the Marshall Plan to rebuild a continent, become the guarantor of high seas commerce, and hold the line against the Soviet Union. For his part, Dean was in on the creation of the modern world.

I don’t claim the high credentials of Mr. Acheson nor am I quite vain enough to think that anything I have done will have those kind of sweeping consequences on the international order. Having a good deal of free time lately to really consider where I am and what I have been doing for the last two years, I can make the general assessment that I am inordinately pleased. In my own way, I’ve been a part of something that will cast its shadow long after I depart from the scene. These few years have been the most intense, most disappointing, most gratifying, most frustrating, and most intellectually challenging experience of my life. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the most gifted minds I have ever known. I’ve met more than my share of colleagues who embody the Peter Principle and who have far exceeded their level of incompetence. Through the pitched battle to carry one vision from concept to reality, it has been a great honor and privilege to work shoulder to shoulder with a small group of people who have earned my unquestioned friendship and respect.

We’re off the ground now and our creation is beginning to take on a life of its own. New faces and new ideas are being brought into play. Those of us who were present at the creation are moving off into our own orbits now; managing our finances, planning for the worst case scenario, and chasing an elusive dream that lives somewhere out there on the sunny east coast. We’ve been a part of something special; that most people will never experience anything close. I just can’t say enough good things about you guys.