Saturday:
It's been beautiful weatherwise here, but for some strange reason, I picked inside activities for Saturday's plan. I wanted to finish the master bedroom. Right now, with the exception of the kitchen, I am at the point of finishing most anything, if just spend a day. After I'd made the list, putting times down for how long I'd think everything would take, there was an extra hour, so I tagged onto it... organize the paint (or open a can of worms! in this case). When I'd cleaned off the porch a couple of weeks ago, there were about a billion cans of paint, indoor, outdoor, samples... you name it. Into the garage they went where there was, well, more paint. There were 30 cans total! I knew some would've gone bad in the amount of time they've been around (five plus years), so I opened every can to check, and since I was opening them all, it only made sense to dab a spot of every paint on one piece of paper and label them all for a quick reference of colors, sheen, etc. later on; two birds with one stone. I hadn't done it before and I ended up buying a yellow that was a smidge darker than I'd intended on the eaves. Oops. Not that bad, but I noticed it, if you know what I mean ;)
Eight bad cans of paint got set aside to be taken to the special state approved dump. Samples I'd liked so well I bought whole gallons were added to the the gallon versions, four more cans went. I was in the precarious position of running out of paint for the back porch and so I decided to add the samples of the one shade lighter/darker and the remaining one shade darker quart into the main gallon can to stretch it. Then I found the paint for the birdbath, the missing dark green we used for the window sills, the missing blackberry purple we used for the eaves of the garage, and the missing medium green we used for the garage. I was inspired!!! And outside. I thought to myself, "I'll just do a couple of quick projects outside and then move inside and onto my real plan."
LF and I moved the birdbath and the bird feeder out of the front yard and into the backyard where we see all the birds and set it close to the nest that had been uncovered when I cleaned the fencerow last weekend. We like to sit on the back patio for Sunday brunches and bird watch. Now the front yard was looking better with the falling apart birdbath out of sight, although it looked shiny and new with its new coat in its right spot. LF wanted to swing on the front porch, and since I added the pillow to it, I've been meaning to move it down, now I had too. Ah much better, but the long grass was out of place with everything else looking good, so I mowed the lawn. And since the mower was already going, I decided to do the back yard too. This time, I lowered the blade so as to pretty much scalp the weeds. The lawn looked much better because it turned the weeds into "blades" (that's grass-like, isn't it?) and the grass finally show through. Some more weed and feed, along with seeds and it'll be going again (Ed massacred the lawn when we put in all new plumbing in the city mishap last year). LF was acting out and I decided his "punishment" was to pick up all the little twigs and big rocks left from the plumbing mess, and put them in the divots left from moving around the dirt. And we topped off the holes with the 2-3 mounds of dirt that were left from the mess. We made it all clean; his punishment became beauty :) But oops, sidetracked again. I might as well find the umbrella since I had to move the patio chairs and tables off the patio until it cures. LF and I stopped for a root beer break and sipped at our new found shady spot. That done, I stepped back to look, and the porch roof was now decidedly too grey (the old house color) to stay... and since it was just the rim, and only top of the poles that needed to be painted, well, that couldn't take too long, right? ...and the one undone window could stand to be painted...
In all, I think I threw out 19 or so cans of empty or unusable paint cans and the day was gone. I had to give up thinking I was sidetracked and accept that the master bedroom would have to wait for another day. Just letting myself go with my creative flow was good too. I look forward to finishing up more paint cans. We've never found a good enough green for LF's bedroom, but all those samples will get combined and used for the inside of the garage doors; that'll be about 6 more cans. But the good news is, I finally made it inside and used the last of the joint compound to "plaster" the one missing spot in the master bedroom. I did the laundry, cleaned the house, made General Tso's for dinner and then we watched tv before going to bed.
Sunday:
Sunday we went to my cousins' 1000 acre farm with horses, miniature donkeys, geese, and we got lost lost lost. There were lots of butterflies and watermelon. We ate barbequed pork and chicken. We drank sweet tea, lemonade and cherry vanilla lemonade. The kids fished, played teeball, and swam in a murky mess of grass filled water in their paddling pool, after falling in the muddy creek. They got out waterguns and squirted each other. The adults watched videos of older family reunions. We saw the dearly departed loved ones and exes. Everyone wondered and wondered who that guy was.... it was my ex-husband John. Boy everyone sure was thinner. And much less white hair. The prayer Joe said before lunch said lots of great things, but what stood out to me was "... and bless those that couldn't be here today..." GranMrs, who made sure we made it to the reunions every year wasn't there. She's still alive, but not well enough to travel. She spends her days sleeping as her heart winds down. I thought about her often and cried for the loss that isn't a loss and is. After finally getting home (not lost this time, but a long drive!) LF and I watched the 10 Deadliest Sharks countdown on Discovery. He took a shower and I ate the other half of the General Tso's. Then we went to bed. It was a good, productive, and enjoyable weekend. We'll go on vacation next week, so this week will be spent gearing up. I also found the huge cooler that will get filled with goodies that we'll eat while at the beach.
anneliese_32
endorphinjunkie
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