6:00 am -- My alarm goes off. No point, really, since I was awake and hadn't slept well all night. But here I am.6:10 am -- I get the garbage out to the curb. This is secret garbage, because the Hubs thinks that putting garbage out for pickup on Thursdays, the day they add to the schedule for the summer, is "cheating." I also moved both of the cars out of the driveway and onto the street, because lately, the workers who are putting on an addition at the house next door, have been parking all day in front of my house, and if they get here before the painters, there won't be any place for them to park. Now, they can have the driveway.
7:30 am -- K stumbles into the family room and goes in to take her shower.
7:40 am -- Q is sleeping on the couch, and Boo has magically come to sit on my desk. Seizing the moment, I put him in his box, standing open in the living room, and stash him in the Hubs' study. I picked Q up still asleep and did the same. Once K is dressed and has gone to work, I'll let them out of the boxes in my bedroom, and leave them a litterbox there and a bowl of water. My bedroom and the bathroom are the only rooms in the house with doors. Until they need to paint those doors, I shouldn't have a cat problem. I hope.
7:50 am -- THE PAINTERS ARE HERE!! I KNOW!! No one is more surprised than I am, except possibly K in a moment, when she gets out of the shower.
8:55 am -- The head painter has gone out, presumably to pick up the paint and the doors. K is getting ready for work. She has been in the bathroom for 35 minutes. Let me remind you that there is ONE BATHROOM IN THIS HOUSE! She normally does her hair and makeup in her room, but that's not an option today. Implosion may be imminent.
The cats have been released into the wilds of bedroom land. I opened the blinds, left the light on, and the TV. They have water, a litterbox, and a catbed that they never use. (But it had to come out of the hallway.) The good news is, if Boo's still crying, I can't hear him anymore.
10:20 am -- The guy is back with the paint -- no doors yet -- and they are scraping and spackling everywhere. One patch upstairs has been scraped down to wallpaper that looks like it would have been out of style in 1892. That was painted over with flat mint green before the flat yellow we are now covering over.
K has gone to work, which dropped the tension level around here a notch or two. Hope that's all going well.
10:35 am -- Okay, it's starting to smell all chemical-y. I guess I should have seen that coming.
1:05 pm -- Ooh, it smells in this house! I see primer, I see paint! To my amazement, this is actually happening. When I pass by the bedroom door, I hear Boo crying from just inside, which tells me that I am not going to be able to sneak in some food for them later. Although I don't personally think he's blind, I know that his vision is not good, especially for the unexpected, and he'll charge right out the door and into a paint try. Better to keep them where they are. I wonder how it'll go once the painters leave for the day.
4:30 pm -- K got home about a half hour ago, had a fine day. I just went out to the hardware store in town and picked up new switchplate and outlet covers.
Well, it just smells terrible, but I guess you gotta take the good with the bad. One of the painters seems not too bright; at first, he painted around the wall-length mirror in the hall, but I took it down and said he should probably paint the whole wall. Then he was painting my bedroom door, even though it a) was closed because of the cats inside so he couldn't get the whole thing, and b) has over-the-door hooks on it from the inside and he was painting around those. I told him I would take them off tomorrow and keep the cats in their boxes so he could finish the door first.
What have I accomplished today? I played a lot of solitaire, and imported the Azkaban audiobook UK version into iTunes. I had recorded a couple of episodes of Futurama and I put them on a disk and then converted them for the iPod. I've been oh-so-productive. Did I read a book? Did I watch a movie? I don't think so. Although I may read some now. That'll be R's cue to show up. Her landlady was having professional cleaning people come into her apartment today following the eviction of those two weird roommates, and then she's coming here to hang out, pick some stuff up, have dinner. (We're getting take-out Thai.) Ironically, the living room stuff I wanted her to take is not so much accessible since the painters have put stuff on it. Next time, perhaps.
6:06 pm -- OH MY GOD. Are they ever going to leave?
I must say, this is not my typical problem with workers, that they come early and stay late. Enough is enough; it's a long day. The girls just went to pick up dinner, and I have got to get those cats out of that room! By now they have probably eaten each other. (Okay, let's face it. Q has eaten Boo. It's the only way.) I would like to feed them and then eat my own dinner, not have to stop eating when the painters finally clean up and leave so I can feed the cats.
They really have gotten a lot done. I imagine they could be finished tomorrow, but what the hell do I know.
6:55 pm -- Isn't this day over yet?
I finally got the painters to go about a half hour ago. They would have worked for hours more, which I suppose is a fine quality in workers, but you know. I let the cats out as soon as I knew the paint was sealed up. Q immediately rushed over to her food dish, but Boo needed to investigate every smell in the house. He hasn't eaten yet that I can see. I cleaned up some here and there, then moved K's car and mine back into the driveway, at which point the girls drove up with the food.
So let's see. K says there is a stain on the carpet, on the stairs, which may or may not be true. Both girls are also into a bit of the rag-on-mom mode, which is ever so delightful. In other words, I feel pretty crummy about myself right now, as if everything is wrong and it is all my fault. I felt that way pretty much continuously from the late 80's through about 2002 or -3, so it's not an unfamiliar feeling, but it's one I've mostly shaken. Part of it is the stress of the day, part of it is the bad night's sleep. It's also the disruption of work being done in the house, which is probably why we've done so little over the years. When I disrupt their lives, I feel terribly guilty about the whole thing, and assume all the fault and blame. The only one who hasn't really been disrupted today is the Hubs, whose holding a seminar tonight in South Jersey, and won't be home until maybe midnight. After work on Friday, he usually hangs out with his work buddies for awhile, so the painters should be gone by the time he gets home tomorrow.
Well, at least I feel better having written it out. Just before, I remarked that I had forgotten that we got desert tonight too, and K said sweetly, "Dumb." I think the look on my face made her realize that this was not the time for that. She's been better since then. Sometimes when they're both here, they do this weird competitve thing to show how clever they are and how they can get off good lines on me. Tonight, I ain't in the mood.
Okay, I guess this entry is long enough, if anyone out there's still reading it. Time to post. Hope I don't stick my hands in wet paint tonight.
