Paint Whore
January 22, 2008This is what I have been for the last two and half weeks. First the kitchen, see previous post. Now the bedroom. We decided on a light blue color. But to avoid tragedies like the kitchen I decide to put a coat of primer on. It’s like putting the thickest oil you can find on your walls. You drip it on the floor and it dries within seconds before you can wipe it. By the time you get down off your ladder or make shift ladder and start wiping it up it’s half dried and you just make a giant smear instead of a little drip. So you finally finish and try to clean up and thinking some HOT water will melt away the oil you realize that it just makes it easier to smear around and you make an even larger mess than what you started with, so you throw it all away and waste some more money at the hardware store buying all new supplies.
So today temper tantrum went like this:
Put on painting clothes and shoes, move furniture again and trip on it several times, recover plastic on all furniture, remove cats from room, trip on plastic covering bed and then recover bed, get out piece of shit vacuum and trip on cord, begin vacuuming and remove dog and cat from room, trip on vacuum, finish vacuuming, since you don’t like the color and you want it lighter you get out old white paint from basement and get even more pissy while you realize that there are no buckets or any other meaningless containers to mix paint in, returning the the site of paint hideousness the crappy screwdriver I have won’t open the old paint can, instead it’s just unrolling the rolled edge of metal on the lid, throwing said screwdriver on the floor making a huge gouge and almost getting a hernia trying to pick myself up off the floor because I am so sore and tired from moving furniture and moving chairs and reaching to corners that I am weak and it takes almost all my energy to get up, get new screwdriver after tripping on rug in hallway, on the way back to paint cans realize that there is a trail of paint because I stepped in a drip and stomped it through half the house and now have to clean it up, after mixing paints and getting it all over gloves realize there is a cat hiding underneath the plastic on the desk and you have to take off the gloves pick up cat and remove from room and slam the door, half the hair that was on the cat is now on your shirt and falls into paint cans, after removing hair and mixing paint the music is cranked up so no one hears my moans of anger and disgust and stomping and slamming, finally after an hour of painting I decide that instead of waiting until tomorrow and going to get MORE supplies from hardware store and having to move and vacuum everything again I will paint the third coat tonight, so I wrap up all painting supplies in Plastic wrap so I don’t have to clean and wash it. Now I wait and try to calm myself before beginning again.
I just want it over. No more plastic, moving furniture, cleaning up, running to store for one or two more things. I want a day off without having to do anything.
The moral is that painting is never as simple as it sounds. The preparation, process, and cleanup always take three times as long as you thought and three times the energy. Painting, tripping, and hair cause extreme crabbiness.
