Think I Can Do It???

Think I can get all caught up on my blog tonight???

Nah, me either. And I have no business blogging. I've got way too much to do. I'm supposed to be moving out of the Powell's house right now. I have a total of 4 days to have a-a-a-a-a-a-all of our stuff moved out (we've been here for just shy of a year and it's amazing just how much we've moved in!) and endeavor to have the house nice and clean (or at least decent and presentable--ha!) for it's rightful owners. They'll read this and say, "Oh, don't worry about it! Just do what you have time to do and you can always come get the rest of your belongings later--and there's no need to have the house all spick-and-span, it'll be fine..." That's what gracious people like them would say. Deep down we all know they're hoping I can succeed in ridding their house of foriegn clutter and grime before they get home. ;-)

That being said... I'm not packing, I'm not cleaning. I'm blogging. I seem to have hit a bit of a speed bump. I've gotten a decent amount accomplished and--though there's still TONS more to do--I keep wandering around aimlessly trying to figure out what to do next. So I'm taking a break, hoping that when I resume my work I will have refocused and discovered some mystery motivation. It's worth a shot, anyway.

Okay, let's play catch-up. Here are some of the things I wrote up about three weeks ago.


The Monstrosity: Day 28
Monday , January 2nd

Work, work, work! I knew Mom was coming that afternoon and we still had sooooo much to do to be ready for her. I was running on pure adrenaline from the moment I woke up! I packed the bedroom away in the closet. Sam and I deflated mattresses and put them and a-a-a-a-a-a-all of our stuff away so we’d be able to use the paint sprayer in the bedroom. A shut off valve in the half bath broke while James was removing the old, grimy sink so we had to have plumbers out to fix that. THAT wasn’t on the agenda! It was a quick easy fix at least.

About lunch time some dear ladies had us meet them at the church to enjoy the home cooked meal they had brought with them. Sister Bishop and Sister Fender had brought brisket and buns and beans and fruit salad and all sorts of goodies including some great little cake-like things that Sister Bishop makes and I always forget the name of. We are sooooo thankful to have anything home cooked! We enjoyed the food and the fellowship. And Joe enjoyed showing his new mandolin to Sister Bishop. The two of them jammed for a little while before we left.

When we got back to the Monstrosity Mom was already there waiting on us. We rushed to do the last of the paint prep but I have no idea anymore what that included. But then we start spraying!!! Ah, yes. We unboxed Maurice (that’s what our last paint sprayer was named—he was very dear to me) and I went from room to room with James taking care of who-knows-what while James sprayed primer on EVERYTHING: ceilings, walls, doors and trim. It was a foggy mess in the house and we were caked with overspray. There was nothing anybody could do in the house while all that was going on, so everybody who was around gathered together and hid out in our bedroom with the door closed. I find it very unfair that there was a group of people hanging out in my house fellowshipping… without me! HA! Before too long Sister Bishop and Sister Fender made a mad dash through the fog and back out to their car to leave. Sister Fender offered to let us stay at her house about 7 miles away. With the present condition of our house, we gratefully accepted! WHAT A BLESSING!!! It took 3 or 4 hours, but we got the whole main floor primed that night. How exciting!!! Can you imagine how long it would have taken to go room by room and prime every ceiling, ever wall, every door and all of the trim with just brushes and rollers?! Thank the Lord for Maurice! What a glorious invention!!!

Mom had taken the kids and headed over to Sister Fender’s house and James and I headed over when we finished up with the primer. They had made some homemade soup and grilled cheese sandwiches and peach cobbler for dinner and there were lots of left-overs waiting for us. Of course, we HAD to have a shower before we could think of sitting down to eat. This is what we looked like…



We each showered. And showered and showered and showered! Ha! We finally got all of the primer out of our hair and eyelashes and most of it off of our skin. It’s amazing how wonderful a shower can feel after a day like that!


The Monstrosity: Day 29
Tuesday, January 3rd

Sister Fender made pancakes and sausage for breakfast. We felt so spoiled. Three home cooked meals in a row?! WOW! James and I went to Lowe’s to pick up some necessities—and I gathered more paint swatches. Because of circumstances that would take way too long to relate, we were unable to get the dark red color (Foxtail) that we had tried so hard to hunt down. So I got lots and lots of red paint swatches to look at. When we got back to the Monstrosity I pulled a dining room chair out of the garage and when we threw one of the paint cards on it and it sort of disappeared, we knew we had something close enough to Foxtail to proceed! Or at least hoped so. I was still panicked about it for quite a while (reds are so scary!), but I’m satisfied now. :-)

Anyway, job #1 for the day involved Maurice again. This time we sprayed flat ceiling paint on a-a-a-a-a-a-all of the ceilings on the main floor. Yeah!!! It’s so exciting to get something FINISHED! Now the ceilings are FINISHED! Ha! And they look GREAT. You can’t see any of the places where Brother Hopkins patched holes for us. He did a fantastic job and everything looks so good.

After the ceilings we got out the new red paint that we chose (Chipotle Paste from Lowe’s just for the record) and sprayed the kitchen cabinets and a-a-a-a-a-all of the cabinet doors—they had been removed and lined up in the dining room awaiting a paint job. After FINALLY getting all of the red rinsed out of the sprayer (not an easy job!) we got the creamy/white color (Bleached Linen) and sprayed all of the doors and trim along with a few walls. Meanwhile, Mom was finally able to start putting up wallpaper in kitchen! ~SQUEAL!~ This is the part I’ve been waiting for! The part where pretty things start happening instead of just more and more ugly! Ha!

After our work was finished for the day we went to stay at Sister Fender’s house again, though she and Sister Bishop had left on a trip together. She gave us a key to the house and we ended up staying there every night that week but one, due to paint and water issues! We had leftover soup and cornbread for dinner. We were SO HAPPY and felt SO ACCOMPLISHED having gotten all of the ceilings, doors, and trim painted and all of the other surfaces ready for paint or paper. But we were REALLY concerned with how everything was turning out. I think we learned a very valuable and painful lesson about oil and latex. Apparently you’re not supposed to paint over oil based paint with latex paint—something I’ve never dealt with before. It just doesn’t stick. Apparently what had been in the house before (at least on the doors and trim) was oil paint. We didn’t know that and wouldn’t have known it would matter anyway. The latex paint we were using just sort of slid around on all the doors and trim and it looked like there were masses of paint just sort of oozing down them all over the place! I was sick over it. We spent the longest time going around with paint brushes after we sprayed, just trying to catch all of the oozes and drips and smooth them out. And regretting how critical I’ve been over the people who painted in this house before me who left paint drips all over the place! Maybe it wasn’t really their fault—maybe they didn’t know anything about painting latex over oil either! Maybe I AM one of those people who should be drug out to the street and shot! HA! Anyway, we did our best to fix what we could, but finally just had to call it a night. It was sooooo disappointing to think of the hours upon hours that I had spent scraping and sanding down a bad paint job… only to goop it up the same way in one night! I felt sick over it and prayed all night long asking God to please not let all of our work be in vain and to please somehow help it all to come out okay!


The Monstrosity: Day 30
Wednesday, January 4th

When we got back to the Monstrosity I was sooooo relieved to find that the paint actually looked good! REALLY good in most places! There are some flaws and drips (a few really bad ones!), but most of them were things that were already there that I was unable to fix. PRAISE THE LORD! I spent most of that day thanking God for being merciful and caring about such silly things as paint! He is soooooo good to me. :-)

As for our work that day, we refer to that as the slowpoke day. Ha! We worked and worked and worked, but never seemed to accomplish a whole lot! Mom started in on the red doors. They’d been sprayed red which gave us a wonderful head start, but needed all of the edges painted, then double coats on the front and back. She’s pretty sure the doors kept multiplying as she worked, sort of like the Tribbles on Star Trek. I had a very, very slow go of it trying to wallpaper in the kitchen for some reason. About the time I finally hit my groove we quit to get ready for church. We had a Bible study on the Church and covered just about every aspect possible (ha!), then went to Taco Bell with some of the crowd. We had a great time visiting, then went back to Sister Fender’s house for one last night.


The Monstrosity: Day 31
Thursday, January 5th

I finished upon the kitchen wallpaper (wa-hoo!!!) while Mom “cut in” (brushed all the edges of the room—corners and around ceiling moldings, door trim, and baseboards) in the hallway—there are lots of doors there) and the living room. Then she started wallpapering the laundry room. It is going to be one of the happiest rooms in the whole house.



I LOVE the wallpaper we found for that room. Fun. :-) I started faux painting the hallway. That meant two rooms and a hallway had begun taking on some color and character and I had JUST said, “Man, I wish somebody would come by and look at the house NOW”—when there was a knock at the door! The Ridlespurges had stopped by to check on our progress. Wa-Hoo!!! We had mentioned to the church folks the night before that they were all welcome to come over and I’m so glad some of them did. It’s rewarding to see your own accomplishments, but more fun to have somebody else appreciate them, too. ;-) The oohed and aahed just like they were supposed to, then somehow things took a turn and they were in the office with paint brushes, filling in the grooves in the paneling. That’ll learn ‘em. Bet that’s the last time they stop by to check on things! Ha! After the crowd left we hauled all the stuff out of the closet, aired up the mattresses, and made the beds. We slept at our very own house that night! Wow. :-)


The Monstrosity: Day 32
Friday, January 6th

Mom finished up on the laundry room, then did some priming and brushwork and I can’t remember what all. I was able to the get living room faux painted, as well as James’ office. We had Roto Rooter out in hopes that THAT would fix our water problems. We already had the septic tank pumped. Things were still backing up. Roto Rooter didn’t work either, but the guy who came out was a really nice backslidden holiness preacher boy and James was able to visit with him a little bit. Pray for Kelly. :-) Anyway, once he cleaned out the main pipe and loosened all of the muck in it things were backing up REALLY fast and we knew there would be no flushing of the toilets or anything that night, so we loaded up and went back to Sister Fender’s house for the night! But not before a FANTASTICAL dinner and some great fellowship. The Washburns brought dinner to us! Sister Tammy had made her blue ribbon white chicken chili (did I get all that right?!), some tasty beef enchiladas, some sort of Mexican creamed corn with crumbled bacon on top, and these dainty little gingerbread cookies with a cream cheese/whipped cream/marshmallow cream/brown sugar/chocolate chip dip—wowzers! Everything was sooooooo good. And she says she can’t cook. BALONEY. (Can you cook bologna too, Sister Tammy???) We had a great time with them, then enjoyed a few rounds of Bananagrams. Fun. :-)



It really is amazing how perfectly everything worked out that week, beginning with Sister Bishop and Sister Fender being there on Monday when we started the spraying, thus causing Sister Fender to insist that we come stay at her house! And then that the water situation held out all week long until we had completed our work on Friday evening before worsening to the point where we can’t keep working (because we can’t clean paint brushes, etc.) Perfect!

We spent Friday night back at Sister Fender’s house, then slept in a little bit on Saturday—which felt sooooo good! We drove to Hoover and took Mom to the Olive Garden as a “thank you” before sending her off to Cleveland. –And we took her by the Christmas Tree Shops, too. Found a few good bargains, like we always do.

James had business that afternoon, so the kids and I went to Big Lots to buy a couple of shovels, then Wal-Mart to buy a dress shirt for Joe--so he wouldn’t have to look like an Oompa Loompa again this week wearing one of Sam’s way-too-little shirts. He was so relieved. We went back to the Monstrosity and Sam and I spent quite a while digging down to the septic tank. We got a pretty good head start on the hole before going into the house and getting things cleaned up and organized in there. I pulled a few shelves in from the garage to keep kid clothes on in there, hoping things will stay neater now. Riiiight.

When James got home we drove to Sister Fender’s house to enjoy some left-overs from Sister Washburn’s gourmet meal the night before, get showers, and hit the sack.

And it appears that's all of the notes I have saved on my computer. So more catch-up later. I should have Internet the next few days, so maybe I really and truly can get caught up this week, in the midst of all the chaos. Blogging is therapudic for me and seems to sort out all of the insanity. I should definitely do it more often. ;-)