Perhaps it's a Midwestern thing, dating back to my childhood in Minnesota. Whenever my mother needed something in a hurry, she would send us kids down to what she called the "corner grocery store." The store was not located on a corner and was about a mile from our house. But wherever we lived in Minneapolis, the neighborhood always had a corner grocery store where we could go for emergency supplies.
I have a corner grocery store near my home in Land Park, too. This store is even located on a corner. It's closer than driving to Walgreens on Broadway. I imagine the clerk behind the counter yesterday afternoon may have wondered why I was buying 3 huge bottles of nail polish remover. Most of the clientele for this store buy individual cans of beer or bags of potato chips. Hey, I watch AMC's Breaking Bad. So, I know that clerks sometimes report customers who buy unusual quantities of certain types of products to the police.
I then rushed back home to hand the bottles of acetone to my husband. He was frantically scrubbing the tile floor in the family room. Want to know why?
My manicurist, Rosa, works at a nail salon just past William Land Park on Freeport. This salon is where a few other Lyon real estate agents go to get their nails done. Rosa always slips my bottle of nail polish, emery board and file sponge into a plastic baggie and drops it in my bag after doing my nails. When I came home from my nail appointment yesterday, I tried to carefully extract this plastic baggie from my bag without messing up my nails.
Well, the baggie was not sealed. The bottle of nail polish crashed to the tiled floor and shattered, spraying red nail polish on the floor, our Oriental rug and my Coach bag. How many things can I ruin at once? Never in my 57 years of life have I broken a bottle of nail polish.
Since my nails were still wet, I couldn't clean it up. I screamed for my husband to help. First priority was to get the polish off the tiled floor before it soaked into the grout or permanently stained the tiles. Second was my Coach bag. I suspect the lifetime warranty for these bags doesn't offer protection when its owner dumps nail polish on it.
The rug? Well, my husband pointed out that I've been yakking about buying a new sofa. Knowing me as well as he does, he says I'll want to buy a new rug anyway. It's the way the world of home improvement works. Soon as you fix or replace something, other items start to talk to you. They say, "Hey, what about me? Am I not an eyesore, too?"
This morning I discovered that our cat, Pia, has a long red whisker. She has a few dried red hairs on her back, too. I can clip those, but I think I had better leave Pia's whisker alone and wait for it to fall out.
Photo: Elizabeth Weintraub
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Certified HAFA Specialist
My Sacramento Real Estate Listings
Elizabeth Weintraub is an author, home buying columnist for The New York Times-owned About.com, a Land Park resident, and a Land Park real estate agent who specializes in older, classic homes in Land Park, Curtis Park, Midtown and East Sacramento. Weintraub is also a Sacramento Short Sale agent who lists and successfully sells short sales throughout the four-county Sacramento area. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Put 35 years of real estate experience to work for you. Broker-Associate at Lyon Real Estate. DRE License # 00697006.
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I love it. I wish you had filmed it or taken pictures. Have a great weekend.
Elizabeth: You sound like a clutz, just like me! This sounds like a Chris Ann style screw up. And funny, I'm painting my toenails red today. I think I will be using extra caution. Thank God my Coach bag won't be anywhere near the bathroom.
I chuckled at your expense, and I don't feel bad about it..LOL...Thanks for sharing
Cute story Elizabeth! It happens to the best of us! I knocked a small bottle of makeup off the bathroom counter as I was hurrying to get ready one morning. What a mess!! Oh well, we're only human! :) Have a wonderful weekend!
Your story sounds all too familiar, thanks for the chuckle. You're cat will be okay, and on the bright side you get to update your furnishings. (The Land Park area in Sacramento where you live is so beautiful too)
Elizabeth: It is obvious to me that you need to get your priorities straight. Forget about the tile, forget about the grout... just SAVE the Coach bag. I mean... girlfriend... first things first !
It sounds like your hubby-pie is well-trained, too... or at least at times he pretends to be. Soo... good for your... and good luck with Pia, too. Another possibility with Pia, other than waiting for the one single whisker to fall off... is to try and paint all the other whiskers red. What a stylish kitty you will then have. Cute story... thanks for sharing.
Sounds just like something I would do! Hope you managed to save the coach bag
Elizabeth, I am a big klutz. I am always dropping, spilling, tripping. I have dropped countless bottles of nail polish and have never broken one either. Sorry about the bad luck, but it's a great story!
Elizabeth-that sounds like something I would manage to do :-) It did remind me though that when I used to raise OciCats and we would have two litters at the same time that nail polish was the way we made sure to keep the kittens straight. One litter would get red polish on one or two claws as the mommie kitties were known to borrow each others kittens when the other wasn't looking.
Thanks for sharing a funny story today...I needed the laugh.
Well, when I held Pia up to my husband's face for inspection this morning, he looked at her and said, "Hey, Pia, don't you know that some cats pay $600 for red highlights?"
I can send my bag to Coach for repair, but the main problem is I don't have any time to shop for a new sofa or rug. Have you ever shopped for rugs? It can take hours. Some people spend days looking at rugs.
Elizabeth: Life would be so much less interesting without the chuckle of small catastrophes. :-)
Yikes. Sorry for your disaster. I hope your nails got dry without a problem. I've actually only ever had a problem with the nail polish remover myself. And that got hidden by a dresser scarf. oops.
Elizabeth - Oh Lord girlfriend, been there, done that. I'm a bit of a clutz too and broke a bottle on an antique vanity that was hell getting it off and kind of ruined the varnish too. I covered it up with the venetian glass table tops though and you would never know the difference.
Now a video of the bottle in the air and the impact on the floor would have make a great presentation. Too bad for all the clean up activities but stuff happens like this and we need to clean up and move on. I bet today will be a better day.
Nail polish is a bugger...that is why I always stay at the salon the 7 minutes they recommend with their bake and blow dryers...and I never ever paint my own....not the walls, nails, cat, purse....good luck !
Elizabeth - I'm sitting here laughing so hard I'm in tears. I can see the chaos of you and your husband trying to clean it up, and your feeling it's going to cost you your fresh manicure for certain:-)
Yeah, Myrl, another woman probably would have said "forget about the manicure," but it costs me an hour to get my nails done. Ten minutes there and back, 30 minutes for the manicure and 10 minutes to bake under the blower. I absolutely cannot paint my own nails, and I could never color within the lines as a kid, either.
Elizabeth,
What a collection of comments you got here. From a a suggestion to get the rest of whiskers painted red, to "the chuckle of small catastrophes", wow.
A funny story with great comments, indeed.
Cute anecdote about the real world. Now that you have the new sofa on order, life is probably good.
This is so funny. I can see you screaming for that mild-mannered husband of yours! And he, instead of calling you a clumsy dodo, suggested you buy new furniture. He's a jewel!!!