Tag Archives: house schtuff

Why are you so tired?

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I always feel kind of stunned by this question and I get asked it a lot. It’s weird living in a place where basically no one is familiar with my back catalogue of writing. I do not direct anyone here at all anymore and I won’t start. I no longer believe that reading my blog is a way for people to know me. It is a way that some people have learned some things about me and then they fill in the blanks with assumptions and projections and in the end I feel like maybe they know me even less than if they hadn’t read the blog at all. It’s complicated.

I don’t do all the cleaning in this house, thank goodness. But it’s a big house. What I don’t do myself I have to manage and parcel out and track. In some ways that is better and in other ways it is just as stressful and challenging. The kids alternate between calmly going along and doing what I ask and screaming at me that I am a horrible person who makes them hate their life so that’s fun. Apparently when I spend two weeks saying, “Look at the current chore list and figure out what/how you would like to renegotiate the things on that list” and they say “Oh the current system is fine and I want it to continue” so I continue to remind them to do the exact same thing they have been doing for 4+ months all of a sudden “YOU KEEP INTERRUPTING ME TO TELL ME TO DO RANDOM STUPID SHIT.” Uhm, excuse me?

I write down chores in a daily planner book. I do it months in advance according to a system that I sat down with the kids and worked out. “About how many days can/should you go between doing your laundry? How often should we clean bathrooms and who should do which one? What is fair for doing dishes? How often should we sweep and how do we want to rotate the chore?” The negotiation is long and detailed. It’s not just “Mom Made Me.” The kids talked about at what point they find using something gross and it needs to be cleaned. Professional house cleaners come in every other week and do a basic upkeep so we are not required to do all of it ourselves.

But when I say, “Hey x, y, and z have been assigned over the past three days and you haven’t done them–can you please take care of that?” I am a complete and total asshole who must be raged at. Awesome. That’s not fucking draining or anything.

I ask my kids if they want to do classes and if so what kind. They tell me they want me to hunt around for them and find classes like a, b, or c. I do that. It takes time. The classes cost money. I find what they say they want and show it to them. “Are you sure you want to do this? It is x-distance from the house and will take you at least y-time to get there? It will take z-money out of the budget so I won’t have money for this other thing.” Yes they want it. Then they get 3 days into the class and all of a sudden I am a horrible person who forces them to do stupid things they hate and it is all my fault that they don’t have any spare time because instead of actually fucking riding their bike they choose to push the bike both ways at a speed of approximately .5 miles an hour. Not draining or frustrating at all.

The older kids have locks on their doors. They usually won’t use them. Youngest child is constantly in their room stealing stuff because obviously big kid stuff is cooler and I have to spend a lot of time trying to keep large, towering people from screaming at a small child until my ears ring. It’s shitty and not cool all the way around. You getting louder doesn’t solve the problem. You locking your door solves the problem. But you won’t take responsibility for what you can do you just want to scream about how you feel violated. Cool. That’s not fucking exhausting.

The amount of hoarding and screaming and fighting in this house over food is making me hate my life and everyone I live with. So fine. We are going to buy more shitty food and I am going to stop arguing because they need to learn how to live with their bodies. When you transition out of limiting food it is always rough. (There are actually principles behind this transition and I am too tired and my hands hurt too much to explain them all. I did a fair bit of research on the topic and I am not going to justify it here. If you are legitimately curious let’s schedule a video call and I’d be happy to talk about food scarcity mindset, neurodiversity, nutrition research, and parenting choices.)

Gardening is a lot. This space is so much bigger than what I had in California and I feel like I am working myself to the bone. The kids are supposed to help and every minute of help is difficult to get and involves a big fight. I am so tired. I do most of it myself because I just don’t have it in me to fight. Sometimes I am out in the yard well past dark crying just doing it all because I cannot fight for more help.

My buddy is here and that is complicated. He has lived alone for a long time. He has never lived with a child in his life–his older siblings were much older than him and he has no memory of dealing with kids beyond hour or so visits sporadically with friends or family. There are a bunch of challenges around that. He’s here for a while. He is being *very* helpful in re-teaching me how to use power tools and helping me build some projects I want done. He is also used to working in a defined way always on a dead line to very technical specs that must be met because (reasons). My compost bins and chicken coop are not similar sorts of things. The amount and kind of project meetings he wants to bicker out every single last detail are hard. The frequency with which he wants me to stop what I am doing and focus on his questions is hard because I am keeping a lot of balls in the air and I don’t change focus that well. I can’t get back on track and half an hour of talking (it’s always “I only have a few questions and it will only take a minute” but really it’s many questions and it’s 30-45 minutes) set me back 1-3 hours because I have lost focus and flow and maybe I can’t even get back to what I was doing because now I have lost that window of time and I have another thing that has to happen Right Now. He has a lot of time to rest and chill out in between work times. I don’t.

I started typing this 45 minutes ago. Then I was interrupted to go fix a computer problem for a child (that has to forking start with a multi-hour download of updates because oh boy nothing will work when you are that far out of date) paused to brush the cat because folks noticed some fleas and the brushing needs to happen before the medication. I still haven’t finished my tea from breakfast, done the budgeting updates I’m supposed to do, or emptied the dishwasher and reloaded it from breakfast.

Why am I tired? Oh my god are you kidding? Do you actually not understand? Really?

I also need to finish taking the labels off the little jam jars so I can put the spices in them because the random bags of spices piled on an open shelf that fall down every single time you do anything cause daily frustration and frequent messes and I just can’t.

Oh, and I should paint today, do some weeding, some carpentry work, hang out the laundry that is in the washer and start another load. I also need to put the food in the fridge that arrived from the farm share box because apparently unloading the boxes means “put it all on the counter” to my kids. (One of them was cooking and me putting it all away would have meant getting in their way and they would have gotten annoyed.)

Did I mention that all of my chronic pain is through the roof and I am just about out of Ibuprofen gel and I don’t really have time to go get more? Also I need to go across town because we are about out of a few things that I get from the co-op and that’s about 6 miles round trip. I will probably wait until next week and go when I am on my way to or from the Youngest Child’s swimming class.

I told someone that I was falling behind on responding to emails/texts/messages on various platforms and she said, “Yeah I’m a procrastinator too.” ……. Does being so busy that you rarely have time to think a full thought outside of “What task do I need to be accomplishing full speed in the next 10 minutes” count as procrastinating?

Oh, and I need to respond to text messages from Middle Child’s best friend’s dad because otherwise the kids won’t see each other before the school year starts in 10 days and the bestie has been out of the country almost all summer. Woo. Haha. Got that done. Excellent. It will be great to see her again.

And really I have to close because ALL OF THE THINGS.

I’m allowed to be frustrated but I’m not allowed to be angry

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I wanted to get started on the bathroom stuff in June. I specifically had the thought that if there were delays: hey at least no one minds spending a lot of time outside and avoiding the house when it is a disaster. The contractor wasn’t available to start until November. He started on the 24th. He thought he would be done by the week before Christmas.

Then it turned into outsourcing a bunch of pieces because he hates doing those bits. Their schedule needs became a conflict. Getting accurate lists of everything that should be ordered… is literally impossible. And now things weren’t ordered when they should be and stuff could’t come in until January. I am so very very very frustrated.

Oh, now the contractor is very sick. Deep breaths. Can’t be angry. This is just life.

My bedroom and bathroom tile is done. Yay! That’s worth a celebration. The painting in there is far from done. Roughly half the walls in the room still need a plaster compound skim coat due to the removal of icki wallpaper. The plaster guy is just flat not returning my calls. So I ordered a handful of tools. I’ll be teaching the kids how to do the work. We aren’t supposed to walk on the floor today because grout is setting. I probably *should* stick a heater in there because that will help.

That means I can walk on grout Thursday/Friday/Saturday. On Thursday and Friday and Saturday I can also work on painting the walls that have to be painted first (specifically: the walls where shelves will be attached to the wall and the wall with the glass door, oh and I guess finishing the ceiling would be wise.) Technically I’m allowed to move furniture back in as of Friday but I think it is smart to wait till the plaster sanding is done on Saturday. Deep sigh. I am going to move a lot of the furniture back in pretty immediately. Well, I can do primer on the unfinished walls on Saturday after sanding–there doesn’t have to be a big time gap between those activities.

Then the return of furniture! Of course first is the bed. My lovely bed. My wonderful bed. My bed that means that maybe I’ll get to have sex again. le sigh I do like me a closed door. I will put as much of everything else in there as I can while leaving access to painting wall space. It will be nice to have the furniture in near where it will go because it will help me remember where I don’t need to be intense. I’m stealing one of the white boards from the kitchen so that I can have a visual reminder spot that I can’t put down/lose in my room too. White boards are awesome. But I don’t need to do a lot of fancy painting behind it.

For the bathroom I’m thinking the wall that faces the shower will have a pretty serious tree with holes for various kinds of birds and fairies to live in. I think that a branch will come over the mirrors and have a nest on it with pretty speckled eggs. There will be birds flying in the sky up on the ceiling. Maybe even fairies dancing if I can figure out the perspective. Low grass and flowers down at the bottom and in the doorway.

I’ve already painted a fair bit on the ceiling. A couple of them are highly abstract in a way that will lead to many many guesses and possibilities over the years. One is (pretty fucking clearly to me) a vulva because vulvas are AWESOME. My kid says, “Hunh… I have no idea what that is,” hahahahahahahaha. I added a heart with the word forgive dotted inside it but it’s heavily obscured and I think it will only be visible at some times in some lighting (totally my goal). There is a flower because I love flowers. There is a symbol for finding gratitude that I didn’t quite finish because my neck was very angry with me. Over the bed I intend to put a sigil for encouraging peaceful sleep and banishing nightmares. I have room for a couple of other cloud symbols but I’m not sure what yet. Hm.

The office nook will have very little available space for painting. Above the computer monitor area I am going to put the pagan three moon symbol. I might do some vines or other things growing up in the space between furniture but mostly I will just paint the walls solid green behind the furniture and call it good. And by “solid green” I mean dappled greens so that it doesn’t look like some wacko who believes in one color for each wall took over my room.

In the narrow corner above my bed next to the window I want to do a wheel of the seasons. A reminder that change is always always always coming.

I’m still not sure what I want above my bed. That space feels very important and I can’t visualize what it ought to be. The side of the room with the dressing area and the exercise equipment storage will be all Mother Goddess and Greenman energy. Lots of bright colors even though it’s supposed to be midnight in a fairy glen.

I’m having fun.

More medication changes/observations.

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The last time I posted was 2 days after I lowered the Amitriptyline as an experiment. I am talking to my doctor/psych nurse about all of these changes before I do them. It’s kind of weird having a medical team that I call up and say “Hey I want to try x. I will report back on how it goes.” They respond with, “Cool. Let me know how it goes.” I am not used to American doctors being so chill about someone playing with their medication dosages. In emoji terms: 🤯

I had almost three weeks of being on the first step of Amitriptyline dosage. Very quickly I noticed: my mood getting lower (a lot more intrusive obnoxious thoughts during yoga–amusingly), sleep became really hard (the last three weeks I averaged 7.5 hours of sleep when I’ve been otherwise averaging over 8 hours a night for the past few years), I started craving alcohol a lot (back up to probably 8-10 units a week after only 2-4 units/week for the previous month or so), I was more interested in late night snacking, I had several very late night painting sessions because going to sleep just didn’t feel important, I needed more Lorazepam to sleep, my general pain levels were sky high, and I was using more Co-codamol. Oh hey and my blood pressure went from being usually in the 120’s-130’s/80’s to being mostly in the 140’s-150’s/mid-high 90’s.

That’s some forking data. (I mean… sorta anecdata but I have spreadsheets where I’ve been documenting this day by day…) It’s not like I’m trying to apply this population wide or anything.

I talked to my psych nurse two days ago and told her I do not think this is a good time to increase the Lisdexamfetamine because I need my blood pressure under control first; then I talked to my GP yesterday and told her that I think the next step is increasing the Amitriptyline for a month and seeing what happens. They both think my suggestions are dandy and that’s plan A. We will all check in next month and see how things are going.

After another month on the Lisdexamfetamine I am 3.2 pounds lower. That is a very gentle and sustainable amount of weight loss compared to the roughly 10 pounds I lost in the first month. I mean… I’m still 40-ish pounds away from where I feel like my body feels the best in terms of strength and not being limited by chub in the way. I don’t love having to shove a roll of fat out of the way to get into a certain position. I don’t love that it is hard to bend over and tie my damn shoes. But this is way better than the 60-ish pounds I was above that weight for a while.

I have been putting painting progress pictures up on Facebook because that interface is easier for dumping photos. I kind of hope I will get around to putting together pictures on a webpage here sometime soon. It’ll just take a lot more focus and time than I have right now. Erf.

Opportunities and expenses

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Oof. I need to start this off by saying: I am so grateful to be in the position I am in. I am very much in the luckiest top I don’t know what % of my age cohort.

Owning a house is a lot. By the time we finish the current set of bathroom remodels (water dripping down through walls and the wood was not replaced in the last 2 or 3 times things were “fixed” because previous plumbers were asshats) we will have replaced 5 showers and we will only have 2. That sucks!!!!!! But this time (because the current guy is so much more competent) we are going the distance and fixing everything else and getting two whole new bathrooms out of the deal. I’m excited and sad to be paying for them. I was going to limp along for a few more years but if I have to do this much work again… I’m coming out of it with a damn heated floor.

I am also coming out of it with a gorgeous bathroom and a slightly different shaped bedroom and I’m going to put heated flooring in my bedroom and ditch the radiator on the wall. This is exciting to me. It will also as a side benefit reduce the rate of mold growing on stuff I store under my bed. Extra score!

But I didn’t really want to pay for this kind of house remodeling stuff this year. It seems like a lot of dang money. I somehow suspect we are not going to get around to fixing the upstairs carpet for another year or two because… money.

“Where is all the money going?”, you ask. Well… our next door neighbor has decided to change up some things in his life and he offered to let us by the adjoining empty plot of land. We dickered over it because oh my god not having debt has been so nice. We had to choose between liquidating some investments and paying cash or getting a mortgage. Mortgage finance rates in the UK are below 1% and people here complain that they are too high. heh. We decided that having a mortgage also gives us the opportunity to build UK credit and that’s something we care about a lot so…

Damnit. I have debt again. But that means I am going to be scrimping and saving as much as possible. You are only allowed to pay 10% extra in a given year so I can’t massively overpay in the exact same manner I did in California but you only lock in a rate every 2 or 3 or 5 years (I’m going with 5 years so we don’t have to pay the £1500 fee for getting the mortgage as often) and at that point you can dump as much as you want into paying off the mortgage. That sounds terrific. If I want to pay it off in 10 years or less I will need to be dumping in the neighborhood of £25,000 a year into this. That’s going to make a big difference in our spending over the next few years and the house remodeling stuff is not helping my stomach hurting over how I will get everything done.

I mean. I’m a lucky asshole and I have more security and financial ability to swing stuff than other people. But I will go back to being as conservative as I possibly can in a bunch of areas. That’s not strictly speaking my favorite.

(The loan is for more than we need just for the property. It’s complicated and I can’t disclose the full details around why the loan is for so much.) If we were just financing the property I would only need to find around £15,000/year. oof.

This is leaving the stock option part of Noah’s income alone as investment stuff every year because we need to be growing the investment portfolio towards retirement. He’s really scared of that cliff that tech workers have where they just… don’t get jobs when they are older. He feels like he for sure has 10 more solid work years left in his industry and he can’t promise 15 more years at this salary level. That seems incredibly fair so I feel like we need to get all the house fixing/mortgage stuff paid off in 10 years. I mean… houses will need more in the future no matter what. We will always have to save for that and have money sitting around waiting for the next disaster. I am hoping that it will all be ok. I mean… I’m a lucky bitch and I have more chance of it being ok than I could have ever dreamed when I was young.

But golly I hate owing anyone anything.

What is a witch?

Recently a little girl told me that all witches are ugly and old and have green skin. Hm. I’ve been thinking a lot about what being pagan means to me lately. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to manifest in this life. I believe that magic is focusing your intention and your will on making something real. I don’t think it has to be about repeating prescribed words or chants that someone else made up. I honestly don’t see much point in following someone else’s path, even as I read books that other people write about their paths.

I think the painting is part of it for me. I often think of it in terms of creating the background setting as if I was creating a theatre set. All the world’s a stage and all the people are but players. (I don’t believe in a binary of genders so the original quote doesn’t seem so fitting.) I am shaping how people see me. I am shaping who people perceive me to be. It matters to me. I put as much effort into this as someone else would put into a spell. I want to draw the right people to me.

Sobonfu told me to make my own community as I will never belong in one that other people have made. I need a place to invite that community. I need a space where people will feel the force of my will and feel influenced without me even having to say anything. If I have to say something then I have missed a window. I have missed an opportunity.

I don’t know how many opportunities I have left in this life. Everytime you miss a window you change the course of your future. You change what opportunities will fall into your lap in the future. There are limits to what any person can accomplish. I know that I will hit limits. I just don’t want to miss opportunities that might be well within my limits.

It feels like it matters so much.

It’s the waning crescent moon. The end of the cycle. Time to let things go, but what? It’s almost time to think about new beginnings again. Oh golly. I don’t know what to let go of nor what to start. So much happening. So many balls in the air. How can I narrow my focus to be more effective? Right now I am spread in so many different directions that I hardly know what to change nor how I will manage.

I know that tomorrow will involve maths, breakfast and a visit with friends, then painting. Friday is a park date with homeschoolers then more painting. My arm is only a little sore. My hand isn’t even numb. Surely that means I am ready for more work. I really want this part of the hallway done.

I really want all of the high stuff done so I can go back to working at reasonable heights with a step ladder. There is no way to get to the other side but to go through. I can do it. I will do it. It will feel good to be done on so many levels. All it takes to get through is doing many more hours of work.

Now that’s magic I can embrace.

Limitations

What does it mean to live in a place? For most of my life I lived more in a general geographic area than in a place. Then I had my time in Fremont–nearly 13 years. I spent a lot of time in Fremont but I still spent a lot of time leaving Fremont. I traveled around the world while living there. I probably missed well over a year of being in the city in that time with all the trips added up. When I was there, depending on the year, I spent a lot of time driving south or north or west to spend most of my waking hours with other people. I was not content in my skin or in my place in the community.

I feel a bit like a ping pong ball here in this small town. I want to pop out and learn more about the community. I want to get to know people. I am someone who likes to know everyone and so far I know precious few. But I also want to spend an awful lot of time at home. I want to paint and garden and learn how to sew and cook and bake and take care of chickens. An awful lot of my push to go out into the community stems from feeling like I have to create a network for the kids. I don’t know how much I want it for myself. I can’t even tell because it is all mixed up.

I am afraid of looking for community for me. I know that the self I am allowed to bring with me here is a carefully edited version. I know that I have to mask my difficulties and challenges as much as possible and when I can’t mask I need to go home. I have challenges and they have to be utterly invisible. I really suck at that and things leak out. Then people feel uncomfortable and it is my fault.

I am afraid of trying to making friends. I know I have Jenny. We are figuring out how the size and shape of boundaries needs to work between us so we can maintain this relationship that is very important to both of us. I love her so much and I don’t want to wreck everything.

I feel like I always wreck everything.

Do I fear abandonment? Enh… not exactly. The funny thing is: you can do a fearsome amount of damage to a person and a relationship and they still won’t abandon you. They will keep coming around year after year because there is something they get there that they feel they need. People submit to being hurt long after they should just walk away because their fear of being alone is far greater than their sense of indignation in putting up with someone who wrecks everything.

People are weird.

I don’t fear being alone. I fear being the source of pain. I fear being the one that someone hears in their head when they feel bad about themself. The trouble with being a highly reflective mirror that shows people who they are is… reflected sunlight can burn. It can burn all the way to the bone.

I fear causing damage that cannot be fixed while creating a bond that means someone will never want to walk away from me. I don’t leave because I’m running away before you do. I leave because I know you won’t and someone has to think you don’t deserve to be treated that way.

Which is ego, right?

I always come back to Karen laughing when I said I had low self esteem. It wasn’t a chuckle or a soft laugh, no it was a full belly guffaw. “You have the highest self esteem of anyone I have ever met.” Damn. That doesn’t sound like a compliment. I do have an incredibly high sense of what I will accept from people. It’s not even that I feel like “I deserve better” so much as I am not going to put myself into a position where I am going to explode and I know what makes me explode.

I’m tired of exploding. I want a smaller life.

I wrote a letter today; my first one in a long time. This wonderful lady has written me so many letters since I moved she outpaces all other mail from everyone else. I talked about my garden because it is clearly very important to me. I am stunned by the sheer variety of plants in my yard and I have not yet catalogued them nor grown to understand them fully. (Apparently one fucker is connected to tics with Lyme disease?! Ok I don’t like the poky thorns that much anyway.)

What do I want to share of myself going forward? I am not defined by where I was nor what happened to me. I am what I do. I cultivate a garden. I work hard at reducing my impact on the earth. I try hard to be creative and possibly even inspiring. I invite people into my little world as much as I can. I have to share what I have to share.

I want to be a positive force in people’s lives. Maybe it will happen and maybe it won’t. All I can do is try. I have to work within my own limitations.

I want to be done painting by November. If I could be done with all the indoor painting by then it would be absolutely fantastic. That’s 17 weeks. If I could manage 20 hours a week on average that would give me 340 hours of work.

All I’ve got to say is thank fucking goodness I am mostly done with the evil ladder work. A little bit is still to go high up but it’ll pass quickly. I have faith. I hope that all the evil high stuff will be done in another 10 hours. I think I’m 48 hours into the hallway. That totally discounts the time I put into the kid doors during the last big round of painting. But hey. Gotta just count from somewhere.

I’m running into the limits of my body and the patience of my little Shortie. She is so damn done. But on we press.

There is no way out except for through. If I get the painting done this year then I can just… leave it be. I won’t have more of that project hanging over my head. That sounds so absolutely lovely. Then gardening and baking and cooking and sewing can become my projects. Chickens. I want to sit around and read in the yard.

And lots of fully functional bathrooms. Woo.

I miss the chatter.

I like being able to talk to myself about what I’m doing and why. But I’m scared. On one hand I feel like I am in a more stable place than I used to be but on the other hand it feels so precarious. I might be more stable in a day-to-day way but I don’t think I feel more secure.

I still feel like I am going to hurt everyone and that my words have a lot of power and I am bad if anything I say makes people feel upset.

I feel paralyzed with fear. I don’t write much at all anywhere anymore because I am afraid of consequences, arguments, misunderstandings, different points of view that make me feel like I am doing something bad again. I don’t want to have the power to hurt people. I really, really do though.

I think/process/experience things as these concentric rings that stack on top of one another and drip down into the cracks. It’s not changing what happened but it adds layers of nuance and difference to the memories and I think/project that other people do the same thing. Only the layers we are stacking are so different that the end result is a completely different thing.

It’s like that thing where if people remember that you were part of the “good old days” they forget that at the time they didn’t like you very much and all of a sudden they want to reminisce with you and talk about the people you used to know in common. They have a picture of you in their head but the total experience of it changes over time. Even if they can remember that they didn’t like you–it’s irrelevant and almost funny now. “Why didn’t I like you? Oh, something stupid. Meh. I’m over it.” But if you stayed in daily/weekly contact with them for all this time they wouldn’t be over it.

People are funny.

Ok I am happy that Noah got a full time job again. It would have been kind of difficult and scary to slowly pay for these repairs over years. Instead I have some confidence that we are going to get to the end of this cycle of repairs and not need to do anything big until the kitchen falls apart. (It’s cheap Ikea shit. That’s not a long-term solution.)

I’ve talked about it on Facebook but not here: this house sure has been a sinkhole in terms of money. Noah’s bathroom is such a wreck and leaking water that we waited until our bank account balance hit a certain level and we started in on replacing it. As has happened more than once with this house… the scope creeps as we find out about the level of damage. Former owners (probably including the ones before the people we purchased from) really did not believe in proper maintenance or doing a job right. It looks like there have been big water leaks for years and the under flooring in the bathroom has old massively destroyed wood just kinda hanging out. It wasn’t replaced the last time someone installed a tiny cubicle shower in here. We (meaning the amazing joiner we are employing) are completely ripping everything out down to studs and the whole floor and walls have to be replaced and the water damage drips down into my room. Super fun.

So there’s going to be some pretty intensive floor/wall/ceiling work involved. Could it be patched up for cheap? Sure. That’s what folks have been doing and that’s why there are major systemic problems. We are paying to put good wood everywhere. Taking out all the wonky barely effective plumbing and upgrading it. Noah is going to double the square footage of his shower. (There was literally no reason to create a blocked off corner and a tiny shower in the bathroom… there was nothing behind the space wasting corner wall thing.)

In self defense from the flood of color he has no choice but to live with… his bathroom and office will be shades of grey. It’s going to be a slightly hilarious contrast and statement about just how much he is compromising in the rest of the house. Clearly none of this brightness is his thing. He’s a patient man.

Despite feeling overwhelming desire to paint most of the house in bright murals… I don’t know what I’m going to do in my bedroom. I don’t know that I want intense colors. What I have lived with for 1.75 years at this point is mostly white walls with one blue accent wall with birds and flowers done almost like a wallpaper design. It’s not really what I like. Noah has the same accent wall in his room and it’s even less his thing.

I want an airy, open feel with very light colors in my room. I want shelves with lots of plants on them and almost no furniture.

When I finish today I need to sit down and do some pencil work on the layout of the bedroom and bathroom. There are a lot of specifics to figure out but I really should get back to painting. I started 4 hours ago and I’ve had multiple lengthy breaks… I want to finish absolutely everything I can do with the ladder in this position and then figure out how I’m attacking the project next. I may do no other ladder work this weekend; I haven’t decided yet. Depends on where I finish and how tired I am. I have to worry about the arm spasms and the back pain a lot more when I’m working this high.

But on the upside: I’m really loving what I’m doing above the stairs. It’s turning out well. Back into the breach.