During this work-from-home year, we have had the great good fortune of living in two places at once. Our farm is only thirty-five minutes from our suburban home, so we commute back and forth a lot. There are advantages to both. Here in the suburbs, I love chatting with Stacy next door. I appreciate the convenience of a garage, and of course the array of nice shoes, high class chapstick, and probably a thousand books. Not to mention the biggest perk: television!

At the farm, we’ve got good 'ole Dona up the road who stops by and checks on us. We’ve got a few favorite books, an array of mud boots, no garage, no pantry, no TV, and freebie chapstick. We’ve also got chickens, bunnies, coyotes, deer, birds galore, and a couple of asshat groundhogs.

So yeah, very lucky we are.

The other day, I was alone at the farm, and that’s nice too. I took a long hot shower and after drying off, I thought I better take a photo of the new cream I was using so I could buy a bottle for the other house. As I snapped the photo, the bathroom door opened.

I screamed a strange gargly thick kind of scream. Nearly dropped the phone on the tile floor.

It was the painter, who’d come to touch up the floorboards, (a day early!) and who screamed a high-pitched squeaky compressed kind of scream.

Who do you feel sorrier for?

Me, caught naked as the day I was born? Or the painter scarred by the sight of a fifty-eight-year-old woman taking a nude selfie.

The cream that caused all this trouble is called Drunk Elephant. A fitting name it turns out because, let’s be real, the vision of me, buck naked, swinging my torso around that bathroom while also lurching backwards, eyes wide in alarm, phone in outstretched hand, probably does not convey “Unicorn Fruit” or “Brazilian Bum,” two other lotions I’ve seen online. Drunk Elephant is made with nine (better than eight!) “signal peptides” and “pygmy waterlily.”

Let me preempt your next question: the positive reviews. That’s why I bought a Drunk Elephant.

Drunk Elephant claims it will “firm things up.” Enough so that the sight of my nekkidness will not cause the painter to drop the cloth and run? Which is what happened. The dropcloth is here. The painter is not.

Drunk Elephant claims it can “smooth things over.” Well then, let’s get to that part. Because now the painter and I have this awkward dynamic. And I like this painter. I trust this painter. The painter has keys to both houses.

My husband says I should pretend it never happened. But he didn’t hear the screams. This was a trauma.

My son suggests I text the painter a message: Send me yur nood. Then we r even.

Please, oh please dear reader, what would you do?

Photo of ManbearPigs bathroom by Renn Kuhnen.