The green poufs in question. They did look terrific . . . for a while. / Photo above and on front by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
I AM ABOUT to provide you with some foresight. Or is it hindsight. Well, my hindsight, your foresight. You can thank me later.
Remember last week when I gushed on about the wonderful green balls and bitty flowers on wonderful display behind my sofa?
The garden witch at Eastern Market swore that this $20 bunch of jolly green poufs would last me three weeks. It did not. We just passed two weeks and I have discarded all but one branch and that one branch has a few sad pendules suspenduled,* and these are beginning to seep a silky fuzz from barely visible cracks.
The worst of it happened late last week, when the branches began exploding all over the cushions. I carefully lifted them from the vase and tiptoed to the kitchen sink as fairy fluffs flew off, floating in the shimmering dust that is the air in my living room.
And then they went insane, sticking to the damp of the kitchen sink and the towels I attempted to use to mop them up and spraying the counter along with the this-and-that I keep about and catching in my hair and my clothes and my frigging contact lenses, you should pardon my French. We will be eating this stuff for days. I now stick to serving white foods.
I thought, as I cursed and dusted and mopped, that I should really take a photo of this because it is ridiculous and a perfect example of how just when I think my life is tidy, maybe even a little cool, that same life laughs hysterically as I flail about.
Living is a treacherous thing to do. You never know. You just never, never know.
Anyway, to resume, we are down to a few of these pouf balls, a sorry display that continues to seep and is about to explode one final time and I hope I remember not to buy these things (which I still don’t know the name of) ever again.
They did look pretty though, didn’t they?
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
*These are not actual words, not even in Yiddish.