Apartmentalization, Comic-Con and Overcoming Paint-Fear...

This week is going by both quickly and slowly, if that makes any sense. Work-wise, it's dragging. Free-time wise...it's whizzing by. I suppose that's the way it always is, really, but I just seem to be noticing it more.

I painted again last night. I decided it was time to conquer my Post Traumatic Paint Disorder. I'm happy to report that the "Mulling Spices" colour seems to be behaving far better than the "Cranberry." For one thing, it's actually covering the walls without needing a primer. For another, it's dark enough that I can see exactly which spots I missed unlike my "Meadow" colour which looks deceptively like it's covering the walls but when it dries, reveals all manner of 'missed' areas.

I'm still not happy with Lowes and their signature paint. I sniff at it. Next time, I'm going to Sherwin-Williams. I have a friend who can get me a 40% discount there. I thought compared to Lowes' paint, it'd be much more expensive but by the time I'm done actually COVERING my walls and ceiling, it would have worked out cheaper to go to Sherwin-Williams. However, we live and learn, right?

Aside from painting, my life is terribly unexciting at the present moment. I do need to mow my lawn yet again. I bought a lawnmower last week and let me tell you, that thing is hard work. It was a bit of a nightmare to get it running. With my piddly upper-body strength, pulling that start cord thingy is rather a challenge. Given that the lawnmower kept dying because the grass was so long and it couldn't handle the load, I had to pull that cord a lot. I got my workout even before I started mowing the grass. Naturally, the bag thing on the back of the mower doesn't do a good job of catching the grass. One lane of grass and the thing is full. This means most likely I will have to rake up the grass clippings. I HATE raking. I find it tedious and rather dull. While I mowed, I did notice that there's also a family of bunnies living under my tool shed. Or, at least, they stay there from time to time.

This poses a wee bit of a problem. You see, I had planned on retrieving Sausage from my parent's house to live with me permanently. But...well...how do I put this nicely...Sausage is a dachshund. His ancestors were bred to go down rabbit holes to hunt, hence their long thin bodies. Sausage is very loyal to his ancestors. Let's just say there might have been an incident last week at my parent's where Sausage found a nest of baby bunnies and decided to honour his hunter's blood. He might have have shaken several of those baby bunnies in his teeth and accidentally-on-purpose killed them.

Bad Sausage. I know it's his nature but...they were baby bunnies. You can see why I'm a little worried about letting him near another family of bunnies, can't you? I'll have to give that some thought.

I do enjoy watching the rabbits though. There's a vacant house right behind me and the rabbits like to bask in the sun on the lawn and the deck of that house. I think there's four of them altogether.

I move in permanently next Saturday. That's when my furniture moves and thus, I do too. To complicate matters, I'm going on holiday to San Diego the following Tuesday evening. I'm actually going to Comic-con, the big comic-book/TV/Move convention. Now is the time on Sprockets when you laugh at me for being a nerd/geek. I've been before. This will be the first year when I go for more than a day. In my defense, I'm going with a friend who has always wanted to go but never been able to find anyone to go with. I'm actually looking forward to it since there's going to be some good panels this year. I know "True Blood" is having a panel as is "Dexter" and "Dollhouse." These are all TV shows I love. There's always a chance to meet/listen to authors I love. As a writer, it's a very good place to go to see other writers and learn from them.

It's also a great place to go to watch people. Seriously...there are some weird people there. I mean, obviously...it is a comic-book convention. Though, the days of it just being "Star Trek" people are long gone. Nowadays, there's everyone from the Twilight crowd to shows like "Lost", movies like the new "Sherlock Holmes" and video games. It's an overwhelming place but it's pretty amazing. Of course, they're doing a panel for the new Twilight movie on Thursday from what I've heard. This means that the place will be packed with teeny-boppers and their mothers, all straining for a view of Robert Pattinson and stalking the poor boy until he has to run and hide. From what I read, he does a lot of running and hiding from insane fans. I don't think he knew what he was getting himself into when he agreed to play Edward Cullen. I feel bad for him because those Twilight fans are quite insane. So are their mothers.

I'll be blogging more about my Adventures at Comic-Con after I've been. It's only two weeks away. I'm excited though I wish the timing were a little better. The week right after I move is going to be a bit hectic. Still, I'll have the following weeks to settle down, unpack and really enjoy the fact that I live in a house. I'm already appreciating that while I have neighbours who seem really nice and they may be next door, they're not directly above, below and beside me in their dwellings. I cannot hear their sado-masochistic sex-sounds from my house. Granted, I haven't tried sleeping in their with the windows open but given that my future-bedroom faces my neighbours who have an eight-year-old, I'm not too worried. Of course, I haven't heard those sounds in my apartment for a while due to the fact that my upstairs neighbour moved out. I'm not too disappointed by that although there was a certain entertainment value that came from that, no matter how disturbing.

I also have my own washer and dryer. You know it's sad when you go to do your laundry for the first time and you actually look for the slot to put the quarters. Yes, blog readers, I have been apartmentalized.

Happy Wednesday

The Saga of the Cranberry Paint...

It's back to work after a long weekend today. These are some of the worst days to have to get up and go into the office. Mondays themselves are bad enough but after a three-day weekend they're worst. They loom like an unwelcome guest, their arrival inevitable and when the alarm goes off to wake us from sleep, we experience a moment of loathing, of hating that the weekend is over.

Of course, I say that after having one of those weekends that didn't really feel like a weekend. I had three days off but ask if I had fun and I'd have to answer with an honest, "not really."

You see, I painted my living room this weekend. I've mentioned in prior blogs that I wanted to do that before I moved in. I had my colours picked out: Cranberry and sage. I liked the samples, I knew I'd like the colour.

I still like the colour which, given the ordeal it put me through, is an amazing fact.

You see...I've never painted a room before. I've been either a parent's-house dweller or an apartment dweller my whole life. Painting wasn't really an option. So I was overjoyed to realize that now I own a house, I could paint it. I knew there'd be a learning curve, a series of trials and errors that are inevitable with each new experience. And, oh yes, believe me, there was a learning curve.

Last weekend, I happily went to Lowe's to obtain my cans of paint. I bought a can of "Cranberry" and a can of "Meadow" which is a pretty sage-green. My paint-mixer was a young man who expertly hit the right buttons to mix my paint and seemed to know what he was doing. So I asked him, "Do I need primer for the cranberry?" He looked at it and squinted and said, "No. It's our signature brand paint. It's one-coat coverage." I double-checked, he assured me it was one-coat coverage.

Let me tell you...it is NOT one-coat coverage. As soon as I finished my masking and prepping and started to roll that paint onto the wall, I realized I was going to have a problem. In my inexperience, I wondered if I just needed to wait for the paint to dry and it would work its one-coat coverage magic. Nope. Coat after coat and it finally began looking like a cranberry. It took three cans of paint to give me an almost-covered room. I could still use another coat but for almost $30 a can, I've overstretched my budget considerably. Ironically, when I was buying my third gallon of paint, another man waited on me and when he handed me my cranberry paint, he said, "has anyone talked to you about this Cranberry?"

"Why, no," I said, through gritted teeth.

"Well," he said. "You're gonna need a primer. Most reds do."

I glared at him which made me feel a little bad because he was being nice. "That would have been helpful to know YESTERDAY," I said, politely. "This is my third can."

He looked a little pitying after that which made me feel less bad about glaring.

I did get my room painted. I realized I'm not adept at detail work and while the green goes nicely with the cranberry, I didn't do so well at making the edges of the room trim look that tidy. At this point in time, I don't really care. I had planned on doing two rooms in three days. I barely got one room done. I worked from about 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day. It was not the most relaxing of weekends but it was productive.

In the end, I have a mostly-Cranberry room. As a messy Monkeypants, I managed to get rather a lot of paint on me. I painted barefoot so as not to mess up my shoes. This meant each day, I had rainbow feet and had to go home and scrub them off in the bathtub to return them to their non-painty state of being. There's nothing better than relaxing in the bath after a hard day of painting with a beer and a Sookie Stackhouse novel.

Of course, also as I am a messy Monkeypants, I made a bit of a splattered mess on the ceiling tooeven with my masking tape efforts. So I ended up painting the ceiling too. I worked hard on that, edging it properly and using an awful lot of muscle rolling above my head. I covered every surface but when I left the house yesterday to return to the blessedly unpainted walls of my apartment, I noticed it was looking a little patchy. I'm not going to pay any attention to that. I will say that to Lowes and your "Signature" paint by Valspar, it is not one-coat coverage in most cases and you probably should note that on your cans. After all, I used basic off-white ceiling paint and I made absolute sure I didn't miss a spot. Yet...somehow....it's still looking like I did miss spots. However, I do like how the good parts of the ceiling look with the cranberry and sage paint. So at least I'm mostly happy with the final result.

The irksome thing is that when people ask how the painting went and I tell them the Saga of the Cranberry Paint, the majority of people are very much, "Oh, you didn't know? You ALWAYS need primer for red paints." Um, yes...thank you, that's very helpful. Even when I asked some of the same people point-blank if they could offer tips and I told them my colour was cranberry, none of them piped up and said, "You'll definitely need primer." Why is it that people are only experts after the fact? It's like when you date someone and you have a nice time and then he dumps you because he's getting back with an ex-girlfriend. Everyone says, "Oh, you didn't know that he and Ms. X were almost engaged before?" or "Well, he only broke up with X a month ago." Naturally, he never told me and neither did they until after it's all over and you're left standing in the rubble feeling rather stupid and naive.

That's the part I hate: The feeling dumb. I know that, truthfully, I'm not dumb, I just didn't know. But as with everything, in hindsight, you realize you should have known better. I should have realized with my cranberry paint that I'd had to use a lot of paint when I did the edges of the room. Yet I was using a paintbrush; it's different from a roller.

I'm not holding anyone responsible for my snafu. The only person I'll hold responsible is me for not researching more deeply. I should have realized. However, I learned and future painting projects will be done a little more carefully. I have a colour called "Mulling Spices" for my bedroom. I don't think there's any red in it but you better believe I'm going to test out that colour first before I go nuts and try and paint the entire room.

Still, as I've said before and will say again, each day as a first-time homeowner is a new experience. I've now painted a room and can safely say that there are things I would do differently next time I paint. And since I have a whole can of "Mulling Spices" paint ready to go, that time is going to come sooner than later. I just hope that it's truly one-coat coverage. Hey, what can I say...I'm mostly an optimist. But I have a can of primer on hand...just in case.

Happy Monday.