Fugly and Forgotten

When people drive by my house (on a busy street in the highlands) they must think I am mentally ill, a hoarder, to be specific.  There is junk stacked to the ceiling in groups.  JunkJenga, I call it…because on occasion I have to pluck a piece for a customer.  It is stacked in such a way that one piece coming off of the pile could result in a pile of furniture legs, old suitcases and body parts all asunder on the garage floor.  I swear to God, if I die from a massive head injury from an old suitcase filled with doilies and other people’s love letters I am gonna be PISSED!  I had to access the clusterf@#k of furniture the other day to pull a coffee table out of the middle of a well engineered pile of stuff.  It took an act of God to get it out of the heap without having to call 911.  I have two fears in life:  #1.)  That 911 will have to rescue me from JunkJenga and commit me to the looney bin  –or– #2.)  That 911 will have to cut me out of my house while Montel Williams televised it all because of a lifetime overindulgence of Hershey bars and  deep-fried fluffenutters.  Ok, I lied, I have 3 fears… The third is that a snake will pop out at me in the process of accessing JunkJenga which will cause me to  fill my drawers (the ones I wear) and have a coronary. 

Having a garage filled with unfinished projects makes me feel crazy.  I open the garage door on Saturday morning ready to start painting and creating and usually end up with  half of it on the driveway and droves of people pulling up to bug me thinking it’s a yard sale.  Last weekend I unloaded on a lady who I allowed to peruse for a good five minutes when she finally brought an antique table to me and said in broken English, “Two Dolla?”  I said, “No ma’am, THAT is an antique and not for sale!  In fact, NONE of this is for sale and where do you see a god@#$^@d yard sale sign, anyway?!?!”  She bolted out of there to her Ford F-250 full of younguns and got the hell out of Dodge!

Now that you think I am completely insane let me tell you that this Junkin’ Magic takes place round about 30 days prior to a Fancy Flea where it gets painted, polished, primped and transported  and then staged and tagged and, well I must say:  Gorg-I-Fied!  Every one of the goodies I create and refinish are acquired because either I love them and would own them myself or because someone pulled up and said, “Here, Dana- I saw this broken-ass thing on the side of the road and thought of you.”  The other day I returned home from work to find an anonymous 2 legged chair with a note that said, “This fell off a truck on Florida Avenue.  It’s fugly…but I know you’ll turn it into a cutie.”  I immediately felt enormous responsiblity to spend too much time and money on taking this crippled orphan and make it both usuable and pretty.  I gave up after a coat of primer and an hour worth of deconstruction.  I threw it in my neighbor’s illegal burn pile and roasted a hot dog in protest of furniture roadkill.  As a public service announcement I urge you not to let friends haul furniture without a tie-down.  Poor Ellie-Mae-The-Chair didn’t have to die like she did.  I was kind of wishing for that garage sale lady to come back.  (I would have let her have the chair for two dolla).