wrapping paper for the jinxed and jilted

I elected not to go out tonight. Or today (apart from errands, which are hardly social). I got up this morning and cooked extremely. It was a bit strange and out of character. It wasn’t extreme that I was cooking. I love cooking. It was extreme that I got up on a Saturday morning to cook four things at once.

Midway through my culinary mania I even took a photo of the intricate purple heart of a spliced kumara. I won’t show it here though because it looks sort of hematoma-ish, like something from a petrie dish that can’t but render you goosebumpy (and make you consider the bloody watery fleshiness of your own mortal bones).

Tonight, in our quest for the magazine-ready unlived-in home, I tackled the office area. I may just talk about this tomorrow. It’s a disaster area. In the course of my initially industrious excavations this evening I found things that made me cringe – nay – cry out with inward humiliation. But still I couldn’t relegate them to the gone forever heap.

I found all kinds of stuff, and then I found what remained of my stamp and ink collection. It’s just one stamp, and it says: REFUSED. I don’t know where I got it, but it’s always been my favourite (until LP and Mr America gave me my very own stamp, saying: from the library of…).

[As an aside, I have been promised Indian printing stamps if I am very good. I’ll show you what I mean once I have been very good and obtained them as my reward. They are really beautiful, pretty much too beautiful and ornamental to use. But rest assured I will sully and butcher them with ink and generally make a mess with them, however beautiful they may be. I don’t labour under the katyink *brand* by accident, you know.]

Weary from box-lugging and nostalgic distractions, I sat down at the desk, listening to crackly jazz, and proceeded to muck around with my REFUSED stamp. I was only taking a few minutes out to rest my packing-fatigued (bloody, watery, fleshy) bones. But then I got carried away (as you can see from image A), and then the night got away on me.

As I was doodling (I considered calling this post my giant doodle, but then thought better of it), I came up with what I think might be a winner of a plan. WRAPPING PAPER FOR THE JINXED AND JILTED. The anti-Hallmark stationery.

Imagine it… you want to return some scratched emo CDs to a former lover. How better to do it than to wrap them up in REFUSED wrapping paper?

Next I will work on the other wrapping paper designs, including:

I’m sorry I didn’t love you enough

It’s not you (but you could have done better)

Take a good hard look at yourself

And…

When I said I was sorry I only said it because we were in public and you were crying

*.*.*.* 

Okay so most if not all of these will end up on the cutting room floor (along with most of the contents of our frickin house and about half a million $4-a-pop super-fortified boxes), but I think I might be onto something here.

As I idly scribbled, I called on Simon to provide me with symbols of rejection. He said the fingers.

Which put me in mind of these sweet things by Paul Maysek, which take pride of place on our newly-arranged mantel-piece.

I am over packing. I think borderline offensive wrapping paper might be where it’s at for me from now on.