divine angst

In looking over my recent posts, I’m betting you people think I forgot that today was Independence Day because I was so caught up in the Fun That Is Painting.

You’d be wrong.

Granted, all we did today was go to Home Depot and paint (and eat hamburgers and chicken wings, God, no wonder I feel so fat). But we celebrated our nation’s independence LAST night with a trip to the local big fireworks show. And let me tell you, it was a fun evening.

How do I know it was fun? Because any evening which includes (1) food on a stick, (2) catching the perfect spot to watch fireworks only half an hour before they start, (3) fireworks themselves, (4) getting offered weed by a latecomer, and (5) a three-mile walk home (necessitated by the million people trying to take public transportation home and, no, that number is NOT an exaggeration) HAS to be fun.

So happy Fourth of July, all! I hope you had a good holiday!

*This piece of music would be the 1812 Overture.

Thanks for the all the painting advice! Unfortunately, Beanie’s GREAT advice didn’t come in time…we are now the proud owners of two orange plastic pans and two shitty brushes. (But we have some good rollers, so it’s all good. We also have some edging tools–one for straight edges and one for corners. I’m not sure how I feel about those; they don’t seem to hold much paint and leave lines.)

Thus far we have taped off and primed all the walls in our living area. (Actually, we need to tape a couple more spots, that we didn’t bother with today.) Eventually, we’ll also prime two walls in the bedroom and one wall in the office. The other walls will remain as they are, since they are the non-dirty and non-spackled walls.

Tomorrow, the plan goes, we will continue to paint. We have a nice sandstone-colored paint for most of the walls and a gorgeous brick red for two accent walls. I’m pretty excited about the accent walls, actually–one is the wall facing the front door, and the other is the wall just through the office door. They always say to paint accent walls across from main entrances, so that’s what we’re doing! It’s an experiment, as LQ said, and hopefully it will be a successful one.

Sadly, I didn’t take Dave’s advice and buy latex gloves; my hands are all covered in white now. As nice as it would be not to have paint on my hands, though, I am not sure I can paint in gloves–I rely too much on the tactile to know if I have paint on a finger or something before I touch something else.

Frankly, I’m still nervous about the whole thing. I don’t know why–the priming went well, and the walls look SO MUCH NICER, even with just the clean white on them, so I shouldn’t be nervous. But I am. What if the colors look bad? What if they don’t go on smoothly and we have spotty or uneven walls? What if, what if, what if?

On the bright side, I didn’t spill anything today. I made a couple of dribbles, but that’s why we have the big plastic sheeting (thanks, Kevin!).