The great Paintening

We bought our house late last Summer. My plan had been that we would spend the first week or two caulking cracks, fixing small things, painting walls, and then move in. I have a ridiculous amount of stuff. It would be a pain to try to move it all and paint around it. Boyfriend, on the other hand, was eager to move out of his current digs, and insisted on moving in immediately upon closing. I was also really excited about having my own house, and gave up the idea of “fix first, move in later”.

Fast forward to now, and we have been staring at the very dull walls ever since. When I was a kid, the appropriate color for “please buy this house” was beige. Beige walls, beige carpets. Oatmeal. Cold oatmeal. Boring. The current trend, in case you don’t spend hours scouring the current house listings, is gray. Light, cold, icy gray that could be blue or maybe white that’s just really dirty. Dull. I have always longed to have a colorful house. I itch to paint each room a wildly different color.

Boyfriend is not a painter. He does the heavy lifting, I make things pretty. So the honor of painting our house has fallen to me. Together we have picked colors, some from scratch and some from a stash of paint I already had. I mean, who doesn’t have gallons and gallons of paint just lying around, waiting to be used?

We decided to start with the dining room. Pretty small, fairly straightforward.

Please Buy Me Gray can be purchased at Lowes

Isn’t that the worst light fixture? I have plans for it to go. It’s way too big for this room. But you see my point? Gray. 

Gray, different lighting

I set to work. I haven’t painted in years. I’m out of practice. Our city, county, and state are on lockdown so I didn’t feel the need to run to the hardware store when I realized I didn’t have tape, and so I freehanded it. Also? No trim paint. Oh well. That can be a project for another day.

Woodland Strawberry

And just like that, I have color in my world again! I have begun the Great Paintening, and soon my house will reel with luscious color. This one is the most vibrant. I think. There’s yellow for the kitchen. But this red is are ee dee red. 

Red, sunnier lighting

Boyfriend wishes me to do the living room next. I’m filled with trepidation. It’s a million windows and doors and a fireplace, and, as previously mentioned, no tape. I better have a steady hand for it. I shall report back later. 

When Good Yarn Goes Bad

I heard this yarn calling my from deep within a bin in my craft room. I don’t remember its origins and it had no tag, which leads me to believe I dyed it. I’m pretty good about keeping yarn with its tag, but I’m not good about tagging yarn I created.

I could, of course, be entirely wrong. It’s really pretty, and dyed in muted grays and browns, which I don’t usually play with.

I knew exactly what this yarn wanted to be when it grew up, and got out the ball winder to turn it into a nice tidy cake so I could begin a pleasant evening of knitting. Here’s where things started going south. It was knotted beyond all belief, and also in several pieces. I’ve never noticed moths, but apparently they nommed hard on this skein. 

I spent two and a half hours fiddling with this thing. It was the knot monster from the black lagoon. It had been cozy in its bin and didn’t appreciate my disturbing it. It fought back. It called upon its wooly ancestors to curse me and thwart my knitty wishes. 

Nevertheless, I persisted. I was rewarded with an array of oddly shaped balls, and I began my project, an Old Shale scarf. What with having nothing but time on my hands (thanks, quarantine!) I finished it the next day. This should be regarded as a minor miracle. I never finish knitting projects, unless it’s Christmas, and even then they’re usually late. 

Old Shale underway

In the end, I played Yarn Chicken and won. I get all the knitting points! Well, not really. I didn’t block it. I get half points. But hey! Finished project! I’m super proud of myself. 

Sitting down with my quill

Once upon a time...

Wait, no. That’s not quite how this one begins. That’s a little too fairy story, and I’m a little too spicy for that.

No shit, there I was. 

Yeah, that’s more like it.

No shit, there I was at work a year and a half ago, when I looked up and realized that standing across the counter from me, perusing home improvement items, was a guy I had known for twenty years but had lost track of recently. He looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him. 

Fast forward to now. It’s a year and a half later and we’ve bought a house together. Built in 1945, recently halfway flipped, it needs some work. Some bathroom repair here, some paint there, and I can’t wait to get started on the yard, which I am going to garden the hell out of. Some things need downright rebuilding. Some things just need little changes. There are some projects we invented - like a wall to hang cast iron pans on. That will be a fun one when we get to it. 

By way of introduction, hi, I’m me, and the part of the Man will be played by Boyfriend. 

The Great Chili Debacle

I hate chili. Well, not really. I hate MY chili. Waffle House chili? Great. The Brunswick stew you get at church port-a-pits? Fab. The chili my grandmother made? An elusive flavor I can never capture.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a good cook. I even used to be able to make good chili, long long ago. I lost the ability, somewhere along the way. It fell off the back of a truck during one of my many moves. I look back across the years at the good chili I used to make, and sigh.

The weather has been chilly (see what I did there?) and Boyfriend has been requesting chili. I have spent a collective zillion hours chopping, mixing, measuring, preparing. I lovingly put all my ingredients in the crock pot, and then carefully taste as the hours go by, adjusting spices. Beans, meat, onions, garlic, all manner of cumin or cayenne, basil or bay.

And in the end I always end up with the same salty meaty bean water.

I’ve tried more or less tomato. I’ve added this bit of veggie or that, some corn, some pepper, more onion. I don’t bother adding chocolate. Chocolate is second-level chili, and I haven’t even reached first. I’ve used various recipes. I’ve tried winging it. I’ve prayed to the chili gods but my cries fall on deaf ears and I am left with an inedible swill. My boyfriend manfully says, “this is great, dear, thanks for cooking,” and then sprinkles most of a block of cheddar and crumbles forty crackers into his bowl.

This is my moratorium on chili. I can’t keep playing with my crock pot’s emotions like this. I’m pretty sure feeding this to humans is against the Geneva Convention. No more, I say! This is the end. I can’t keep producing this weapon of mass disappointment.

Title?

Why do my pictures go wonky?

Sunset.

Left aligned.

Tree.

Left aligned again. 

Is this thing on? I’m so confused. Maybe I should have downloaded the app.