Day 13, Project Three: Deep Breaths

I am so proud of me!

See, I lied to you a little bit yesterday. Not about the goats or the train or about time being an endless song or anything important like all that. But I didn’t exactly fold up my house and quit in a fit of pique like I pretended.

Okay I did … but then I smoothed it out again and started over. Let me explain:

After I posted my snit yesterday, I had myself something to eat and a half hour of quiet time, at which point I was ready to allow as how I’d probably not die if I tried to accomplished something Puritanical after all. So long as, whatever I did, I could do it on the couch, while watching Scrubs reruns on Comedy Central. Preferably with a glass of wine.

And then I had an idea that was so monumentally bad even I could see the flaws -- could see them even I did it. Could see them even as I envisioned it before I so much as moved a pagan pinky. “Ooh,” I thought, “This is a bad idea.” I’d go so far as to say that it was dangerously stupid. But in the end nothing terrible happened, so I don't have to, like, take a lesson out of the experience or anything. (Still and all, I don’t see any reason why Johnny ever has to know…)

I spread some newspapers on the coffee table, threw an old t-shirt on top of them (rag bag, dwindling!), dumped the coffee can of painted hinge-parts out on top of it, donned my trusty mask and cracked the 5F5. Right there on the stained-and-varnished coffee table, over the “oriental” rug (I think it was made in Egypt, does that count?), which was itself the only thing protecting our brand-newly refinished floors.

La la...

Metal is so much easier to strip than wood is, it’s practically fun! You paint the poison on there and then watch as it just bubbles up and crawls right off the brass like a caustic little caterpillar. And then, when you’re done, you can take it to the sink and wash it to get the last bits of goo out of the corners. Look:


(And that, that it’s sitting on, is the selfsame coffee table where I stripped it. See? It’s fine.)

I like this job! I think, before I get around to stripping the other doors (and I may never get around to stripping the other doors), I’ll take all the hinges off and do them anyway. Maybe tomorrow!

No, no, Prudence. Remember what we said about planning for tomorrow? Besides, you’ve got to finish the job you started first.

Yes’m. Yes, Goody. I know.

For now, though, since I couldn’t drink the wine I wanted while I was working with the 5F5 at the coffee table (not with a mask on and everything, I couldn’t), I poured myself a glass of Menage A Trois California Red (very nice, by the way, though maybe you should take this beer-drinker’s wine review with a grain of salt). Then I sank into the cushy wing chair, watched “Creature Comforts” on the tv, and giggled to myself all warm and thick and sweet, like a big old pot of oatmeal…

Day 13: Accomplished
Time: Two episodes of “Scrubs” -- one hour exactly
Cost: Nothing (thank god)
Everybody Pinky-Swearing To Not Tell Johnny What I Did When He Gets Home: Priceless