Buttercream Frosting, Black Caterpillars & Coffee ~ Learning To Let Go and Laugh

For one brief and shining moment in the mid-nineties, I had a live-in boyfriend.

And as I came to find out, live-in anythings tend to ruin most of your possessions, especially the ones that they do not have a dollar invested in—which is pretty much EVERYTHING.

That goes for all significant others, dog, cats, pygmy pigs, and children. They systematically destroy all the material things you love the most.

Case in point, I had an expensive bespoke coverlet made to match the fabric of a very cool bed that had an upholstered headboard that resembled a couch. I know! right?
It was the color of  buttercream frosting, it cost me a fortune, and I loved it more than coffee.

Okay, I mention coffee here because it plays an important role.

One glorious Sunday morning, in a lapse of better judgment, I overlooked the fact that said boyfriend had broken a cardinal rule, the one which stated NO COFFEE IN BED.

He had frothed us each a cup of particularly delicious cappuccino and in a show of my appreciation, well, things got a little out of hand. I’m not going to get into it lest you think poorly of me or worse yet, ask me for details. But let’s just suffice it to say…
A foot (or some other body part, this memory is a bit fuzzy for me), met with two, 3/4 full cups of coffee on the nightstand, which caused one to fly up and into the ceiling fan spraying coffee and frothy milk EVERYWHERE, while the other landed face down in the center of my priceless duvet cover.

It would have been funny if there hadn’t been so much brown on the buttercream and if I’d had a sense of humor at the time.

While we cleaned the floor, walls, and the ceiling, the coffee/milk stain caused our Siamese cat to pee on the bed. Numerous times. I get it. Coffee does that to me too. It was a phenomenon that had never occurred before and never happened again—but it added insult to the injury.

To stop the madness, the brown and smelly bedspread took up residence in my car until I could figure out what to do. Apparently, the giant coffee stain was the least of its problems.

After I got the coffee out of places where coffee should never be, I went to search the cat pee drenched coverlet thingy for a care tag. You know, those tags that have all the symbols telling you how to clean it, but since it was custom-made, no tag.

I was just about to wash it in one of our giant apartment laundry room washers when I remembered that they had teeth and preferred to dine on expensive fabric. Never the stuff from Target. Explain that to me.

So, I decided to accompany a friend to the laundromat, but when she saw the velvet brocade type of fabric on that thing she advised that I get it dry cleaned. That made sense. The fear of this prize possession getting ruined was ratcheting up. Can you feel it?

So, to the dry cleaners I went. The expensive one. The one that had a guarantee and specialized in decorator fabrics. Only the best for this investment of mine.

What could go wrong?

They called in their resident “fabric expert”, a stern woman with black fuzzy caterpillars as eyebrows and huge, magnifying lensed glasses on a chain around her neck. She did a thorough inspection of the coverlet, rolling the thick fabric between her thumb and forefinger, then she paused, skewed her mouth which in turn crinkled her entire face, causing the two caterpillars to kiss just above her nose and form a spooky looking unibrow. She then grabbed a nearby pencil which looked as if it had been chewed to a nub and wrote something on a piece of paper, slide it across the counter to me—face down, and looked at me with her over magnified eyes and the two judgmental caterpillars—waiting for a response.

I turned it over and the dollar amount made me gasp. Her lip turned up slightly at the corner into a smile..or a sneer…I couldn’t tell which.

“Zhah chat urineeen schemel meh nahver comb out, oot zhat meehlk meh churrdle”, she said attempting English in an accent that sounded like a combination of Dutch and Chinese.

I nodded, pretending to understand. “Fine, that’s fine”, I replied signing that scrap of paper as verification that the equivalent of a monthly car payment would be the price paid to save my beautiful coverlet.

About two weeks later I received a call from the cleaners. There had been a “problem” and I needed to come and talk to the manager Mr. SomethingorOther. The trouble was that every time I showed up for the chat…he was out to lunch, off the premises, or had just gone home. Black caterpillar lady was nowhere to be found, and when I asked to talk to her they acted like I wanted to have an audience with the Pope.

I’m going to cut to the chase—here’s the good news: The bedspread that had committed suicide by cat pee wasn’t brown anymore. But it wasn’t a bedspread anymore either. Now for the bad news: It looked like it had run with scissors—or fallen into a wood chipper.

It resembled a shredded mass of buttercream velvet held together by cat hair.

Well, you have to fix this!” I screamed.
“It’s no charge”, said the tiny Hispanic woman who had obviously drawn the short straw in the back room. She crumpled our paper agreement and threw it away as she pushed the buttercream mess my way.
I pushed it back in her direction.
“Fix it.” I hissed, knowing full well that unless they had a loom in the back that was pretty much going to be impossible.

That night, as I plotted my revenge, I splashed wine with abandon all over the cheap cotton duvet cover that was acting as understudy until the Star returned. Should I sue them? Should I make them pay to have it replaced? By midnight, I knew what had to be done.

But days turned to weeks and I never went back to deliver my ultimatum.

One morning when my boyfriend got back from a bagel run, he was acting weird, clearing his throat, mustering his courage.
“Did you ever solve that comforter cover debacle?” he croaked.

I felt my face instantly catch fire. “No! I need to go back there…”

“You’d better wear your asbestos underwear”, he murmured, walking into the kitchen.

“What are you talking about?”

“The place burned down last night. It’s still smoldering.”

We immediately jumped in the car and went to join all the other patrons around the caution tape, ready for a fight. But when I saw the utter destruction and the people crying over their burnt up wedding dress or the loss of their daughter’s baptismal gown, I realized what an idiot I was.

I saw the part my fear of losing a material possession (albeit a beautiful one), had played in this entire fiasco, how I continued to make one bad decision after another, how I couldn’t see how much the freakin’ bedspread just wanted to die…and that’s when I finally laughed.

Carry on,
xox