Progress

A bit of progress has been made on the house. My friend M.J. and her son Jack - who happens to be one of Jamie's best friends - came over last night and we primered the icky yellow bedroom. Well, we tried. See, the paint fumes got kind of thick, and we were trying to primer after dark, and the primer didn't coat very well, so it's going to need a second coat. We were some very giggly people last night, let me tell you! I laughed so much I almost peed on myself, and the stuff we were giggling at wasn't even that funny! I blame it on the fumes.

Tonight, it was back to just me and Jamie again, but we still made real progress. We bought a thicker primer designed especially to go over super-dark colors that eejits insist on putting on walls. (Oh, and it didn't really cost us anything. I had a can of ceiling paint left over that we never used, so I just returned the ceiling paint and used the $$ for returning it to buy the primer!) Then we got to the new place around 7 and immediately put one coat of primer on the fugly paneling in the breakfast nook and one wall in the living room. We had planned on doing second coats on those walls, but we ran out of time. But that's okay. We're still making progress.

Oh, and I made the executive decision that since all the other rooms are painted white, I'm only going to put primer on the patches where I had to fix holes in walls, or where obvious markings and such were on the walls. Since they are white, it will be easy to put a tan-ish color over top of them. This will save us lots of time.

I'm also mentally preparing myself for the fact that we're going to have to move in furniture before all the wall stuff is finished. At least we can kind of place the furnishings in the middle of the room away from the walls and I can try to paint around it. It isn't impossible - just frustrating. But if that's what it takes to get it done, so be it. I'm losing one night of improvement time because I promised Jamie I would take him and his friend Josh to the skate rink on the last night of school (this Thursday). But as hard as Jamie has worked, I think he deserves to have a night to play. Also, Josh's family has taken Jamie to the skating rink many times, especially at the end of last semester. They gave me important final exam alone-time many a night during those last couple of days of school. I figure it's about time I return the favor.

Oh, I almost forgot. Jamie picked out an end of the year "thank you" present for his teacher. She recently bought her first house, and has been having fun buying plants and decorating her first real "grown up" home (she's about 8 years younger than me). So he thought it would be nice to get her a Home Depot gift card so that she could buy plants, or paint, or tools, or whatever she might need to do what she wants with her house. He's going to make her a card to go with it, and he wants to present it to her on the last day of school. I've also been informed by him that he is going to walk up to the elementary school and help her move her classroom and decorate it for next year, when the time comes. Next time I start grousing about how selfish and "gimmee gimmee" he can be, remind me of his generous and caring heart, as evidenced by his offer to her, okay?