The First Brush is the Sweetest

   If you lovelies don't already know, I am the proud owner of a new home (well, new to me anyhow)!  While I love my new place and am super excited and scared, and overwhelmed at having just purchased a new home, there are some definite issues that need to be addressed in my new home.  So, in the manner of Martha Stewart and Kevin Sharkey, I am going to keep you all updated on my (forever) continuing home "renovations".
   Upon settling, I went to the house and counted the door handles.  That may sound silly, but with a 2 and a half year old boy, the original non-locking lever handles would never work. Plus (like everything else in the house) they were that shiny gold/brass color (ick).  My brother and his fiancee came over last Saturday and helped install the new, round, aged bronze, locking door handles (there are still a few closet doors and the front and back patio doors to be done, but those are cosmetic and can wait until I have more money). 

   We also spent about 4 hours cleaning the place top to bottom.  When I got to the Master Bath and started cleaning the vanity cabinet under the sink I noticed a leak from the sink.  My brother, being the extremely handy and awesome person that he is, took the sink apart, fixed it and put it back together in about 15 minutes.
   Our stuff was delivered this past Thursday from MD.  I spent Thursday night getting everything put into the right rooms, putting bed together, and emptying boxes.  I repeated that process Friday night, as well.  This was all in preparation for the painting of the living room. Most little girls plan their weddings, I planned my house.  I pick out paint chips and read Better Homes and Gardens.  Each house I looked at in my hunt, would get a mental makeover as I walked through.  Needless to say I had my colors picked and ready as soon as the papers were signed.  Most of the house will get painted over time, however the living room was the color of dried blood and needed to be changed SWIFTLY!

My actual living room (previous owner's furniture)

 

 

 

 

   I purchased 3 gallons of tinted primer  ( figured I would buy the paint later), and armed myself with tape, rollers, brushes, and the like and got ready to paint on Saturday.  THEN I realized "If I tape it all off now and prime it I will need to paint soon too, or risk peeling off paint when I remove the tape."  The magic of this realization came at 12:15...15 min. AFTER the store closed where I buy my paint (a local Benjamin Moore retailer and also where I worked my first job, schlepping paint and cleaning toilets (glamorous!)).

   My friend had come over to help me paint and it ended up we spent most of the day taping and laying down masking paper.  So Sunday night after my son went to bed, I decided I would get started on a couple if the smaller walls so I wouldn't have so much to do today.  LOOONG story short, I double prime coated the whole living room last night and got to bed by 3.  I just called the Paint store and they have my paint ready for me to pick up at lunch...let's just hope it doesn't take another 7 hours tonight!  P.S. I REFUSE TO EVER PAINT AGAIN!~Lola
P.S.  Finished pix coming soon!

A little something to slit your wrists to

Following is a one page setting sketch that was assigned to me by my creative writing professor.  Just thought I would share my learnin' on here with y'all. Read it if you want to~Lola

                            She stands alone.  The salt heavy air blows her tangled, sea-sprayed hair across her face.  She doesn’t brush it away.  The pre-dawn light turns the dark heavy sky into a misty oyster shell of gray and purple swirling together.  The ocean’s colors mimicking the sky like an angry mina bird.  The ocean rises up as if to grab the sky and pull it down to keep it forever, yet the sky remains out of reach and unable to grasp the oceans waves reaching toward it.  At least that is what she imagines as she stands alone.  The empty beach stretches on either side of her as the waves pull at her toes, grasping hungrily for the tattered hem of her evening gown.

               Behind her, a trail of her bloody footprints leading from the cliffs she descended in the dark are filled with the discarded orchids and paste jewels that once adorned her hair and gown.  It is bitingly cold in the dawn and her skin has taken on a faint blue tinge from the hours she has spent standing on the desolate shore.  She can taste the salt in her throat and on her lips from the sea and the sky and her tears.  Her feet unconsciously dig deeper into the thick wet sand at the water’s edge.  The thick grey brown grains are flecked with black and gold.  Later in the day they will reflect the sun and make the entire beach glow, but now they stick heavily to her well shaped feet and ankles and weigh down the water and blood-stained pale peach silk gown.  The wind is tearing at her and the ocean pulls but she stands frozen.  The screaming inside her is only drowned out by the roaring of the tide crashing all around her.  She stands frozen on the edge of the world seeing nothing but the hours they were together, standing here in the place where they met.

It was hot then, mid-summer, only a few months earlier.  The itchy wool bathing costume was driving her out of her mind.   The heat of the sun beating directly down on her thick chestnut colored hair, causing little drips of sweat to snake down her neck and pool between her shoulder blades as she reclined lazily, eyes closed, in the canvas and teak beach chair.  Her friends were running down the glittering beach, their shouts of joy and laughter always at odds with the silence she preferred.  She dug her toes deeper into the hot sand searching for the coolness underneath.  Silently cursing her refusal to cut her hair into the current bob, she reached for her hat.  Her fingertips grazed the empty place next to her where she had place her hat hours before.  Startled she opened her eyes as the sun seemed to have vanished, as her eyes adjusted to the light she realized that the sun was still shining but had been eclipsed by a body.  As he handed her the errant hat, their fingers touched, and her quiet world expanded.  They swam together in the bracing sea that day, floating together, bodies buoyed by the salt yet drug down by those damn wool bathing costumes.

It is impossible for her to recall they had danced together only hours earlier, impossible to believe that he would never be there again.  Each freezing wave crashes over her bare bloody feet, numbing the breaks and bruises she couldn’t feel anyhow.  The screaming horses, cracking wood, and shouts of her world collapsing begin to roar in her head again.  There was nothing she could do as she held him in her lap, his body a mangled heap.  She just told him how much she loved him and stared into his dimming eyes, her tears washing rivulets of salt though the blood on his face.  There was nowhere for her now.  Nowhere but the edge of the empty world watching the sky and the ocean wage their endless battle to be together.

Peace out 2010, don't EVER come back!

   Over the past year I have: lost a job, gone through a custody battle, moved back in with my parents, moved to another state, finally found another job, battled with my attorney over getting the child support she “won” for me, battled with my attorney over her $27,000 bill, battled with Child Support Services, to get the money they were sending back to “D-Bag”, had my child diagnosed as having severe allergies (which usually turn into ear infections/bronchitis/or other illnesses that keep him out of daycare and me out of my new job),had to buy a new car (less than a year after getting the other one paid off), and am trying to buy a house with me and 2 other people on the loan.  Can I just say that I have never been so glad to be done with a year?  
   At the end of it though, I have a solid job, am back home in the state I love, my son is in a great daycare close to my job, we ALMOST have a house 15 minutes away from work, and I might even get child support soon.     
   Dear 2011, You may not include: fire, blizzards, floods, court cases of any kind, accidents, incidents, or catastrophes.  You are to be profitable, pleasant, and soft-spoken.  Because I said so~Lola

WORTH IT!