the cat is away

There is an old saying, "When the cat is away, the mice will play." I can't verify the validity of this proverb in real terms, but I do know that when Doug is out of town, I sometimes "find the time" to do some project that I probably wouldn't do for a whole variety of reasons, if he were home.

I did try and get Melanie to fly down and paint the house for me when I realized that Doug would be at Woodbadge for the next 5 days. She couldn't (see her blog dated September 7.) So...I decided that this would be the perfect time to learn how to paint. The project, of course, is to paint the house--a project that I have been waiting years to have finished. Since Doug started painting our house, Tricia has lived in three houses and owned 4 cars. Melanie has given birth to both of her children and Cherylyn has graduated from BYU, married and given birth to a son.

I really don't even like the idea of painting. It seems like a very messy job that could go quickly awry. I am not afraid of the messy part (see my blog July 2 entitled "the messy cook".) It's the going awry part. In the end, I decided that even a bad paint job would look a whole lot better than what I have got. I am sure that I will at some point take the fall for 12 decades of bad painters that preceeded me, but I decided to go ahead anyway.

This morning it was raining. I thought I remembered something in the back of my mind...Doug telling me that you can't paint in the rain...I mean, I could understand that if the surface you were painting was wet, but there was plenty of surface area on my porch that was not wet. I decided to call the paint people at Lowes Home Improvement Warehouse of Mount Dora. (I had to put their whole name as listed in the phone book, because it cracked me up.) I talked to the paint lady. She said that I DEFINATELY SHOULD NOT paint. I decided to called Home Depot. I talked to the nicest lady there! She said that she had painted in the rain just the other day and it was no problem whatsoever. Since I bought the paint at Home Depot (several years ago, before the Lowes of Mount Dora even existed), I decided to paint.

Shooter gave me the look that I usually get from my girls when I start one of these projects, and I was off and painting. I did notice a strange black rope on the porch fence. Since I just pressured sprayed it on Saturday, I wondered what Brianna could have left behind so soon. As I went over to check it out...oh! yes! my friendly neighborhood black racer snake. I decided to let him sit there and watch me. I checked on him every fifteen seconds the entire morning, just to make sure he was still there and not climbing up the ladder ready to strike at my legs like in some horror movie. He was very accomodating and minded his own business.


I found it quite peaceful (apart from worrying about the snake) painting and listening to the falling rain. After about 10 minutes, my hand and arm ached so badly, I seriously wondered if I could continue...but, of course, I did.

I painted for two hours. My hand and arm have still not forgiven me. I hope they get over it by tomorrow morning. I have all day off work tomorrow, so they are in for some brutal punishment.

Tonight, I went to Camp Lanoche to the "Scoutmaster's Dinner." (Check tomorrows blog for that exciting event.) Doug asked me what I was going to do since I have the day off tomorrow. I told him exactly what I was going to do..."work around the house!"













I'm painting the light yellow. Doesn't it look great, so far?