First of all you are spelling it wrong: the correct spelling is odour. Odor just doesn’t look right.
I’m in luck; the heat has broken (somewhat) so I will be able to paint with the windows open. Its not just an odour with paint, its toxic fumes that give you a headache. Its a sharp chemical smell that stays in your brain.
Its been 6 days preparing to paint my living room. I’m going out of my ever-loving, freaking mind. It took two days just to wash the walls. I just want to get this done.
The painting goes pretty fast compared to all the prep. I started painting yesterday. It was 3:00 by the time I finished taping and I was punchy, stumbling tired but I had to start painting even if it was just a little bit.
I was worried about having to keep my windows closed, circulating the fumes with my air conditioner.
Today and tomorrow I can paint with the windows open! That will really help with the odour.
Oh good; more opportunity to talk about my big painting project. You can see why I have so many hundreds of followers.
Yesterday I continued emptying my living room in preparation to paint. I moved furniture into the guest room and took everything off the walls. Its shockingly dirty.
I have a woodstove which is responsible for the grey tinge in the corners but when I started to take stuff off the walls it left an outline of grey, dusty grime.
I have a very short set of shelves (once a headboard) that’s adjacent to the woodstove. When I pulled that out I screamed! OMG! Dust and dirt and cobwebs . . . I found 5 pencils, a ruler and a sweet grass braid all bound up in dust and cobwebs.
My first thought was; I’m not doing this without a puff first. (marijuana; its legal here) After that; I donned my gardening gloves and moved in stealthily with my vacuum hose, picking out fallen pencils and vacuuming them off, sucking up blackened dusty crap.
I should be ashamed of myself! But I’m not, so there.
I finished what I wanted to accomplish yesterday; getting every unnecessary thing out and exposing all the dirt. Today I start cleaning; washing the walls. Its a lot of work but it really is important before painting.
My other rooms where easy due to low ceilings: I could use a step stool. The living room has a high ceiling so I’ll be up and down on a ladder all day. This could be the worst part of the whole job; washing the walls with Mr. Clean (or M. Net if you are French)
Mr. Clean gets rid of dirt and grime and grease in just a minute. Mr. Clean can clean your whole house and everything that’s in it.
(Sorry, I can’t help it.)
I can keep my TV plugged in, thankfully. Its on a rolling cabinet. Yesterday I watched two movies while doing this; Cry Freedom! and Witness. In the morning I made a playlist calling ‘painting’. Its over four hours long. I listened to many podcasts while painting the other rooms so there’s still that. I couldn’t do this without some music or entertainment. Well, I could but it would be awful.
So clean/dirty is going to be dirty>clean today!
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “clean/dirty.” Use one, use both, use ’em any way you like.
Good word for today. That is what is on my agenda; preparing to paint.
The painting part is actually easy: its the preparation that take so long, especially when you are 66 and do everything by yourself.
I posted Wednesday that I cleaned out the corner of my living room that has a woodstove and firewood rack. That was enough for one day; I had to get outside and do some weeding as the weather was so nice!
Yesterday I sorted and stacked all the magazines I’ve acquired over the years. My sister subscribes them and I let them stack up here. I took as many as I could carry to my afternoon volunteer gig at Opening Doors. The CAA travel magazines went into recyclables.
And that’s as much as I got done yesterday: this is going to take a long time.
Today and all weekend I have no commitments. Its all prepare, prepare. Empty the living room, wash the walls and tape, tape, tape. My TV and Big Chair will stay in the middle of the room.
I don’t care if it takes all weekend just to prepare to paint. . . it probably will.
Let the extravaganza begin! I can procrastinate no longer. Well, a little longer if I write this post.
Today I begin the project of painting my living room. This is going to be a huge job compared to the bathroom and the guest room. Those two rooms have low ceilings, I could do them with a step stool, but the living room has a high ceiling which will means a lot of up and down on a ladder. And the other rooms where small; this is big.
I’ve got a long way to go before I can start to paint. Preparation is most of the work when it comes to painting a room: the actual painting part goes pretty fast in comparison.
This morning I start with the wood stove area. I haven’t cleaned that up from winter yet. I was burning wood into June this year and I knew I was doing this big paint job and would be cleaning the whole room thoroughly. This mess is usually hidden by the couch but I gave away my old couch a few weeks ago.
The flash really captures the cobwebs
Its going to be a dirty, dusty crappy job and its probably as far as I’m going to get today. I still have outside work to do, too.
I wish I had started earlier; the weather is cool now and I can open the windows which is wonderful! However, by the time I get this room and walls cleaned it will be hot again. I . . .
OMG! Breaking news! There is a Pileated Woodpecker outside in plain view right now! Yes, a real Woody Woodpecker! They are quite big! So cool. . .
Where was I? OH, yeah, the extravaganza of a paint job. The Big One.
This is how I do things now that I’m 66 years old and retired: I chip away at big jobs. Its so nice to be able to say; “that’s enough for one day”.
I’m also doing this outside with the jungle that is trying to take over my shrubs. The weather is cool now so I’m weeding until I can do no more. I just chip away at the worst areas; take my little garden bench and do a 20′ stretch.
Everyday I can, I do an outside job and an inside job. This could take weeks and it probably will. I am going to set up my TV viewing in the centre of the room and cover it while I clean and paint. Its on a rolling cabinet my dad made many, many years ago. Thanks, Dad!
looking the other way
Well, I can’t think of anything else to write about it; I can procrastinate no longer!
I’ve been sitting here for a while. . . ‘frame’. Frame.
Let me frame a moment of my morning; (gosh, that’s a stretch.) That moment is me, sitting on a huge, stuffed chair I was lent because I have no couch right now. We had no power: the electricity or hydro, as we call it in Canada, was out.
(Background to framing the moment): I had woke up around 5:45 and realized the power was out: the fan was not blowing a breeze through the bedroom. The atmosphere was dense and dark. I went back to sleep hoping it would be back on when I woke up again. It was not.
We are having a heat wave as I’m sure most of you are, too. This is brutal. Hot and humid right through the night. I am so fortunate to have central air conditioning, I don’t take it for granted because I have lived without it. Nowadays, its necessary.
Yesterday I did a lot of TV viewing. The rain completely missed us so I went out and watered everything. HOLY MOLY! It’s hot! I thanked God when I went back in to my cool house, my big stuffed chair and TV. OMG: I’m so happy to be retired and not have to go to work! That’s when we forget how great it is to have electricity.
Every morning, when I get up, I turn on my computer and my coffee-maker. I go to the bathroom, splash cold water on my face, get my coffee and head to my computer.
Not this morning.
I went and sat on my big chair and stared at the black TV. I need coffee. Please come on. What will I do if it doesn’t come on? I need coffee. It’s 7:30 a.m. and its already hot out. What do I do now? What am I going to do today? I need coffee.
That’s what I repeated, over and over, until that lovely hum and click of my answering machine told me it was on. YAY!
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “frame.” Use it as a noun or a verb or any way you like.
I watch a lot of TV and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Like most people, I hate commercials and have found ways to avoid them. Here are my instructions for watching TV:
Record everything; constantly peruse the guide for shows that have too many commercials and save them. Sometimes you want to watch smart stuff but sometimes you want stupid stuff with people who make you feel better about yourself. Ghost and scary shows can be saved for daytime viewing when there aren’t many ghosts around. The Daily Show can be recorded to watch at dinner the next day instead of sleeping through most of it. Old movies can be saved for rainy afternoons.
Perhaps you see a show that is streaming and you want to watch it now. Watch it until the first commercial then start a recorded show. The show that is streaming is running behind the recorded show so you can run it back when the recording is stopped. Its good to keep half hour shows and shows with comedians or skits such as SNL for that purpose so that you can stop it and go back to the streaming program; running it back to where you left off.
Watching Dateline and 48 Hours at the same time is not recommended; it gets very confusing.
Your feet should be up on an ottoman or something similar. (Right now I have a Rubbermaid storage bin with a pillow on top). Remotes should be at a 50°angle just beyond your reach. That way you get a little movement to keep your blood circulating. You’re working your core!
Snacks should be at a 30° within reach. A drink should be on the opposite side, also within the 30- 50° angle and within reach. Your cell phone should be within viewing sight but not desperately close. If you are serious about TV, its more important than your phone.
Warning: DO NOT watch Dr. Pimple Popper while you are eating.
I hope this has enhanced your TV viewing experience.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “instructions.” Write instructions for anything you know how to do. As detailed or as rambling as you’d like.
Wassa matta whit choo? That’s what came to mind. How can a make a post about chewing? Mmm. those M ‘n M’s I chewed on last night where so good.
I wanted to write about my friend, a spider, who lived under my kitchen window for almost two months. I would like to say she chewed on ants but spiders suck rather than chew.
I left her there because I thought she would be a deterrent for the endless parade of tiny ants that keep looking. looking for something, anything. She would get an ant every once in while, there was a little pile of empty husk ant corpses below her but that didn’t scare them away.
She grew daily and didn’t go anywhere so I left her to the all-you-can-eat-ant smorgasbord.
Ants chew. Damn it, they can find the smallest crumb left over and before you know it an army comes out to share the feast. One forgotten grain of cooked quinoa, invisible on the counter, surrounded by little ants looks like a flower as they encircle and chew on it.
I’d choose one spider living with me than these unrelenting ants.
But I had to let her go. The other day there was a familiar little ball next to her. Oh yeah, I’ve seen those little balls explode into hundreds of little tiny spiders and that wasn’t going to happen in my kitchen.
Very carefully, with tweezers, I pulled the sac and the spider into a plastic jar and took her outside. My intention was to put it in a safe, sheltered spot to hatch.
But I dropped it. (Gasp!) I dropped it. I saw the spider hurry away but could not see the egg sac. I’m pretty sure it fell between the boards on my deck.
I’m sorry Ms. Spider. I didn’t choose to separate you from your babies. Do spiders stick around for the hatching? Do they care? Do they feel their young? Is she upset she’s away from her safe home?
One side of my mind chewed on this for a while but the other side of my mind argued, “WTF? Its only a spider. Don’t be such an idiot.”
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “chew/choo.” Use one or both, any way you’d like.
Whwhwhaaatt! I sputtered, Its Canada Day! Hey, if this was the July 4th there would be ‘America the Beautiful’ all over this site. But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to be party-pooper and complain about fireworks.
I live in a beach community and there are fireworks in the summer on any given night, for no apparent reason. But now its Canada Day. There were fireworks at the campgrounds Saturday night. I think its a ‘welcome back’ thing: first weekend of the summer. There are quite a few Americans with cottages and trailers here as we are close to the U.S. border.
Last night (Sunday) there were fireworks in 3 different directions. They weren’t close enough to see but sounded like they were next door. There was one place setting off canons, I swear. I was far away from them and they were way too loud.
Not only that: every once in a while, into the wee hours of the morning, another one will go off. I can imagine a couple of drunks around a campfire thinking it would be funny to let one off after everyone has gone to bed.
But the scariest ones were those that make a whistling sound going up then spiral down, sputtering. That sounded like it was right in the woods next to me. It sounded like burning and crackling right through the trees.
It scary for me and I know what it is. I’ve had 3 dogs in my life and every one was so afraid of fireworks they would cower and shake. The animals and birds must be the same: it must be terrifying.
Today is Canada Day. Tonight is the big firework night. The last two nights were just the prelude to firework frenzy!
All that money burned, the pollution and the noise; its excessive.
monicle's chronicles 