Bucket O Britches

originally posted: 2nd week of February, 2001

With the T'ai Chi demo coming up this weekend, I decided to make sure my studio clothes were clean and in good repair. The black cotton pants, while still in fine condition, had been washed so many times they looked grey, so I decided to dye them dark again, just for the heck of it. I picked up a package of RIT dye at Walgreen's and mixed me up a batch of trouser stew. In a bucket, in the bathtub.

Well, first off, I neglected to pick up a pair of rubber gloves along with my dye, so I ended up wearing plastic produce bags over my hands with rubber bands at the wrists. Not my best look. Second, I didn't really have anything on hand with which to stir my brew, so I grabbed what was nearest: the plunger. I washed it off first, of course. Picture me perched on the edge of the tub, hands carefully bagged, agitating a bucket of britches with a motion like churning butter. Really, really dark, runny butter. For half an hour.

With plenty of time to think, I recalled the directions on the dye package -- the part that read, "Don't even think about using this in your porous ceramic bathtub, dipstick." Oops. Too late. I had already splattered and sloshed up a storm in there. Decor by Dr. Rorschach. So as soon as I had whisked my inky duds away to the washer for the final cycle, I had to scrub basically the whole bathroom with Ajax With Bleach and rinse with a bleach/water solution. The cats thought this great sport, as I decided to strip down to keep from getting bleach on my clothes. Why the caution with the bleach but not with the dye? Uh . . .

Anyway, it all turned out fine. My pants are once again a nice shade of black, and my bathroom is once again nicely white. I guess I went so far toward the one that I ended up with the other, and how very yin & yang is that? A perfect T'ai Chi lesson.