Look, it is not a lot to ask, I don’t think.
After years and years and sleepless nights of scraping and steaming wallpaper from the walls of many, many places that we have lived…praying to the home improvement fairies for their aid — I have, for the past three years, been dreaming about wallpaper.
It doesn’t help that I am couchbound right now —. Looking for distraction and — well, distraction.
I have been looking to fall in love with a wallpaper for a teeny bathroom and, betraying my younger, ambitiously do-it-yourselfer self — I have fallen in love.
It’s all about the birches, bitches.
I have fallen in love with a wallpaper of birch trees.
And now, from the couch, I am interviewing wallpaper hanger-uppers.
I began by googling (I kid you not) “how horrible is it really to hang wallpaper?” …and concluded that this time, at this specific point in my life, I was not up for this job. Then I wrote to a friend: “hey, that really cool bicycle wallpaper you put up — did you do that? Did one of your brothers do that? — and if yes, can I hire them to help me?”
“Haha”, he answered…”my parents did that. They are specially gifted in wallpapering skills.”
Omg, I responded. I need your parents.
“Sorry”— he said. “They have seven children. And every single one of them wants wallpaper.”
“Get in line”, he said.
I posted on an online forum for my neighborhood. “Anyone know a wallpaper guy”? I received some responses.
One guy came, looked at the teeny room (it’s like 4×5) and texted me the next day that he is too busy to do such a small job.
Another guy came at 7 am — after telling me he was an artist, wanting to see my work, spending twenty minutes showing me on his phone all his murals all around town, talking about how brilliant he was (while I am standing there leaning on my walker, sweating, struggling to stay upright) — he is overcharging me for his creative brilliance and I am sure that I will not be hiring him.
All I want are birch trees in my teeny bathroom. Is that too much to ask?
My needs are modest — I am thinking. I understand that to have wallpaper is a luxury…to be privileged.
In this time of fire and flood, of hurricane and hysteria, I understand what it is like to have a crisis. To lose a home. I lost a home to a fire, already. (Read about Our Fire HERE)
I lived in exile, waiting to rebuild. Been there done that.
But in the days of managing post-operative pain, being at home and waiting for bones to grow I am dreaming of wallpaper.
I am dreaming of birches, bitches.
I am praying that the tylenol will last a bit longer and I won’t have to go back on oxy.
I am praying that those displaced by Hurricane and flood will find home and peace again.
I am here, in the meantime. Wishing for a wallpaper wizard.
