Day 7

January 21, 2015
Q-tips
Day 7: Q-tips

“How on God’s green earth could something so innocent, so little and so incredibly ordinary be such a pain in the arse?!” How indeed! The answer has skillfully eluded us for almost two decades. Ann lists this question in her top five questions that will never be answered in her lifetime. The question follows shortly behind classics such as, “We have a brand new dryer! Where did the other (place adult word here unless children and/or parents are around and then place safe word here instead) sock go?!”  “Do ‘your’ children not know where the dishwasher is?!” And my personal favorite, “I understand the science Adam, but seriously, how can something that big fly?! Wings or not, that thing shouldn’t have ever left the ground. It’s absolute nonsense.”

At least twice a week I’ll notice Ann walking through the house and out of nowhere, she’ll bend down, mutter “something” under her breath and pick up a single Q-tip while gritting her teeth which makes her nose wrinkle up a bit. The interesting part here is that these incidents don’t happen within the same vicinity. In fact, a single content swab can be found ANYWHERE! When I say, “ANYWHERE,” I mean it! They’ve been discovered in every room in the house and she even found one in the car not that long ago.

At one point we believed they were stalking us, deliberately running reconnaissance missions as to shift our moral. So to counter their offensive, Ann ran a multitude of strategic plays in hopes to eliminate the threat.

She put several lots of swabs in a Ziploc bag and tucked the group into the back of her bathroom closet. One time she bought the little travel packs that have like ten units all bundled up in a cute little package (yes, she’s always been a sucker for a pretty package) thinking the less that were around, the less likely they would appear. We had a sign in sheet at one point for gaining secure access and she even stopped buying them for a while, but as I’m sure you have already guessed… she kept finding them!

It’s natural to believe that since we have four daughters that they could be held accountable for these unnerving acts of randomness and in most cases I’d agree, but Ann shot that theory down years ago quicker than jackrabbit on fire.

So in honor of all that’s perplexing and downright obnoxious, I present this Q-tip. Every time I see a Q-tip now, I wait eagerly to see her cute little nose wrinkle up. I remember the days when she found the answers to the questions she most desperately sought and most importantly, I see her, just as unconditionally as I did when I first laid eyes on her… almost eighteen years ago.

 

Medium: Watercolors
Size: 6 x 4 (inches)
Materials: 90lb Cold Press Paper
Frame: Mini Wooden Shadow Box with Glass (4 5/8"W x 6 5/8"T x 1.25"D)
Completed: Sunday, October 5, 2014

Artist: Adam Kiger
Represented By: Park View Gallery
Artist's Website: www.adamkiger.com

 

Who is Ann and what is 31 flavors of love?!