A Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows

Because I haven’t been posting that much lately, y'all probably think Johnny and I have been high-hogging it on the down-low (poor is the new rich, or so they say). But no. We adopted that trend early, and we're over it. Crying poormouth is just so last-fifteen-years. We were destitute back when it was not cool to admit it, and quite frankly this trendspotting has me pissed. It took (and I had help) more than 20 minutes to find a pair of my-size Levi's in Goodwill the other day. Feh. So now that everybody else is playing pauper, Johnny and I have decided to go ahead and act the prince. To flaunt ostentatious displays of accomplishment designed specifically for others to admire, with utter disregard for others' comparitive skint.


All of which is to say: the AssVac's got her paint on! 

Sort of. Mostly. With a few minor exceptions.


As you can see, for example, the Ugliest Thing is no more (which is a kind of shame, despite its turpitude) but it still wants a couple shakes over the extant hole.


And also, that's not a finish coat, it's tinted primer. But it's the same color that the finish coat will be, and scraping and priming is the longest, hardest part of the paint job, anyway. 


Except for windows.

Pretty...

Yes, well, they keep predicting rain this week -- it hasn't rained, not really, but they keep insisting that it will -- so Johnny's spent more time peering out the windows than he has painting them. Eh. It will get done. Eventually. In the meantime, the trim really doesn't look all that bad from the window of a passing car, and the neighbors are so thrilled with the red they haven't noticed. 

Seriously, people we've never met before are stopping on the street, rolling down their windows and shouting from their cars. The ten-year-old from one house down even stopped his bike and mimicked Johnny's accent: "Jaysus, man," he called out, "that looks grea'!" It's all made me wonder if that cheery red isn't the reason for the sudden welcome feeling that we've gotten in the neighborhood...  

I mean, I've told you about Alice; we've always liked Alice. And the Irish girls over the fence are always nice (I've told about them, too, but I can't find it). Lately, though, the new young couple across the street have been really friendly, too -- which might or might not have something to do with the fact that their two year old walked out the door when nobody was looking, and it was Johnny who saw him, hopped the fence, and scooped him up out of the busy street. But I defy anybody to tell me why the neighbor we hate would suddenly offer us an entire tree's worth of firewood that he cut down, just so we could burn it in our chimenea. That one gesture right there shattered my every notion of the Townville universe.

(Unless, you know, he's a landscaper and dumping it in our yard was easier than paying a disposal fee. And unless it turned out to be crawling with carpenter ants. (I'd like to take this opportunity to give a shout out to my Cousin Donna, who unfortunately knows better than I about such things -- Donna, you should post the story you told me on your blog! I still have the email you sent, if you want to cut and paste...). I sprayed a total of four cans of Raid into every piece of that friendly firewood, and I only felt bad about it for a second, when I saw a tiny earthworm come coughing out of one of them, writhing in little annelidic death throes. I'm not sure how healthy it is now for burning, either, because on some nights, when there's no moon in the sky, I swear it glows. But at least it restored my notions of the universe! Now, where was I...?)

So the neighbors are happy about the color, yes. Although they might have been just as happy if we painted it puce, as long as it was the same color all around. Because the shingles on that back part have been raw wood since we hung them in 2004 and, like I said, the rest of it has been two-toned for seven months. Now, at last, the AssVac's vitiligo is no more.

Except.

Johnny's got a thing about working at heights. Something to do with falling from one once upon a time and breaking bones. I told him I would do the dormer, but he insisted that he could. He has now, over the past few months, managed to borrow scaffolding and whatever else is needed from three different people for the job -- he has enough safety gear piled under the porch to tightrope the Grand Canyon -- and yet, somehow, the dormer just keeps sitting up there being blue.

I hope it changes someday, but am also realistically resigned to semi-permanence. And, in that light, I've decided to think about it as a public, and yet appropriately subtle, declaration of our new-found, self-defined, aristocratic blood.