Painting, painting, painting

Last week, we (FINALLY) closed on our house. After taking a while on Thursday of last week to sign all the paperwork, on Friday, at 2:00 PM, everything went through, and Husband and I now own our first house. We immediately went into makeover mode. As everyone knows, we were going to paint, and I so didn’t want to. But hiring painters didn’t work out in my favor, because Husband didn’t want to. Ugh. So we painted a little over the weekend, (only a little, because the city had turned off our water, and its difficult to clean brushes with no water) and then on Monday, really tackled it. And by we, I mean Husband painted. I warned IN ADVANCE that I wouldn’t be painting, that I hated it more than anything, ever. So I spent the week cleaning the house (drawers, etc) while Husband, Sister and Sister’s Fiancé painted. We were doing ok, we ragtag bunch of painters, until we realized Wednesday that we needed the house painting done by Thursday night, so we could steam clean the carpets the next morning, and have them dry by the time we were going to move in on Saturday.

So we all took Thursday off of work, and went into super-painting mode. By this point, all of my drawers and cabinets were clean, so I had to jump onto the paint train. Since I still hate to paint (yeah, this didn’t change) I was mostly in charge of taping off the trim, painting the trim, and general clean-up. We got started early, at like, 9 or so. We were also joined by Brother-in-Law, that was a help. So all the guys are downstairs, doing all the big painting of stuff, and Rory and I are upstairs, cleaning up all the mess from the wallpaper (that took about 3 days to get off the wall), doing the trim, and just working in general. As we’re cleaning up the final bits, I look down at the carpet, and see red splotches all over. Let me preface this with, the night before, as we were painting with the cranberry color, someone stepped in the paint and tracked it all over the light blue carpeting. That made me upset, but seeing it happen again today, I just about flipped my lid. So after I spent some time screaming at everyone (I had to yell, seeing as how we were all in different rooms!) I look down, and notice that its on this thing where I had just stood. So I look down, and its not paint – I had apparently sliced open my foot at some point (but didn’t feel it, or register it, I guess) and I had been bleeding all over the place. So after I apologized to everyone and got it all cleaned up, we kept cleaning. After a couple of hours, the upstairs was totally painted, the floor was finally wallpaper-free and clean, and everything was done. We stopped then, and had lunch.

Then, the rest of the house. At this point we lost Brother-in-Law, he had other things, so it was the 4 of us again. We taped, and painted, and sung, and talked, and worked tirelessly for a long time. It got to be about 6-ish before I started to lose it. At this point, I was sick of painting, I was sick of taping, I was sick of being in the super hot house (we couldn’t have the AC on in the house, because the guys installing carpet were having an issue with the AC and the carpet. Plus we needed windows open for ventilation). So this is when the mood turned slowly from having semi-fun painting to hating paint and hating the house and hating everyone around me. Needless to say, things got dark. But after an hour or so of a downfall of moods, things picked up. We finally finished the painting and clean up at 9:30. We all slowly shuffled out of the house, burned out, tired, dirty. On the way home though, we stopped at Arctic Circle and got ice cream cones. We all skipped dinner, so you’d think we’d have been starving, but no. I was just ready for bed, and an ice cream cone sounded like the best thing ever.

So now, here we are. The house is done, all that’s left is a little light cleaning, and putting vent covers/outlet switches back onto the walls. And by tomorrow evening, we should be totally moved in. I can’t wait to be moved in there, and I’m just glad that we’re done with all the painting. And here’s to hoping that I’m done with painting for the rest of my life.

Medaled

Ok, peeps. I had another race this past weekend. It was, (and I know you’ll be impressed by this) the Lindon City Days Dash – a 5K. Last year, I did this race pretty quickly, I won my age group. I was so psyched when it came around again, of course I entered. This time, I was hoping to get the same result, but since I’m no longer as fast as I used to be, (because lately, I’m in like, a runners funk. I don’t know what its about, but I just don’t want to get up and run. And when I run, I’m just so lazy, I run slower than I used to. Oh well.) I didn’t know that it would happen, but at least I’d give it a go.

So we (PJ and I) show up at the race at the appropriate time, to get our race packets and pin our race numbers to our shirts. The race was a totally different course than I thought it would be. Its always fun to try a new course, but I like having the same one, because then you know just when it’s going to go uphill, and when you have to push yourself and when you can hold back. So I was going into this blind, but confident. The countdown began, and when it was time to go, off I went.

I did ok. I went pretty fast right off, and was doing pretty good, until about mile 2, and then, I slowed a bit. I was getting a little tired, and my body isn’t used to racing 5K’s right now, the last few I’ve done have been 10K’s. But I held in. I kept going. I did the best I could, and then when I was nearing the end, the course went uphill. That’s right, one of the fewest races in the entire world where you run UP to get to the end. As if we’re not already dying by the time we get to the end, we had to finish by running uphill. But I soldiered through it (probably slowed right down) and then finally finished. After a post-race cool down (complete with blue Powerade and a slice of bread from Kneaders) we sat down and waited for the “awards ceremony” to get going. As they’re passing things out, I realized, I actually wasn’t that fast. Hearing the times of people, I was like, shoot. I did my best, but I guess it wasn’t fast enough. So then they get to my age group, and they say the fastest time was me! I was so surprised, I shouted and screamed, and jumped up to get my medal. I meant to take a picture of it, but I only got this one of me and PJ (how attractive do we look in this?!) so here’s a half picture of the medal.

So there it is. My medal for being fastest in my age group (25-29). I am a little proud of myself, so I want to share this with the world. This is the only race I ever get medals in, because the race is small and there aren’t many participants. But I’ll forget all that when I celebrate my victory.

Oh, BTW, the shirt that I’m wearing here is a hamburger, and underneath him is the saying “Runners have the best buns” and I thought it was magnificent. And then the little burger is saying “Tasty!” so I thought that was even better.

Foto Friday

The photo for today is:

This is my nephew, Nathan, with me at an RSL game. It was the one last weekend, where we creamed NY 3-0. Husband and I took him for his birthday. We also took my sister in law for her birthday, so it was like a birthday-palooza. Today, the 12th of August is actually Nathan’s birthday. If I’m accurate in my guessing (and I’m probably not) he’s turning the big 1-4 today. I love my nephew – he is so much fun. He’s finally getting to be almost taller than I, its about time. He’s so quick with a joke or a funny comeback. I’m trying to get him interested in soccer, so that he’ll start playing. Since he’s almost in high school, I want him to be on the HS team, but I need to work a little more with him before he’s ready. He doesn’t know this, BTW, I’ve decided all of this without him.

Anyway, happy birthday, Nathan!

Miscellaneous Monday

Well, it’s almost upon us. I know you don’t know what it is, so here, I’ll tell you. This week, Thursday specifically, Husband and I will be closing on our first house. Its been a long while to get to this point, and now, here we are, about to sign all the paperwork. (Which, from what I hear, is a lot of signing. I’ll be sure to warm up my hand beforehand) We looked through many houses, and the one we’ve chosen is (obviously) our favorite. We’re signing on Thursday, and then we’ll be official home-owners. I can’t wait.

Unfortunately, with buying a home comes the preparation for moving in. We’ll own the house this weekend, but probably won’t move in until a week or two later. We’re wanting to paint the house. We’ve picked some good colors, ones that I’m excited for. I HATE to paint. I don’t have any other word for painting except for hate. I get so angry after about 3 minutes of painting, and I don’t even know what it is about painting that incites my rage so. So while Husband is all buckled down to paint it himself, I am looking for painters to do it for me. I’m just saying, yes, it’d cost a little bit of money, but come on. Someone would come to this for me, they’d do a way better job than I could ever do, and get it done in about half the time. Plus, then I wouldn’t have to paint, which is a win-win for everyone.

My Tivo is quite full right now. For those that have followed my blog here for a bit know that I love my Tivo. It contains all of the things I love, its always there for me when I’m bored, it completes me. I’m still getting used to having to share it with Husband, and that on some shows, I have to wait to watch it with him. Luckily, he usually doesn’t like my favorite shows off of the CW or ABCFamily (I’m not ashamed of these shows) so those I can watch with some freedom. Because Husband has been working later than usual this past little while, our Tivo has been backing up. We try to catch up, but we don’t always just sit about watching TV, there’s things to do, things to see, so we fit it in when we can. Yesterday, I made a remark of how far behind we were, and joked that we shouldn’t even leave the house, we should just stay in and watch as much as possible. Husband said I wouldn’t be able to handle staying indoors, watching TV all day, which seemed like a challenge that I accepted. So yesterday, that’s what we did, and I’ll be darned if I didn’t catch right up. Of course, there are still shows on there that need to be watched, we didn’t get everything in one go, but we got pretty close. At the end of the day, as we were going to bed, I said that I had completed the challenge, and won. And then, I thought, I didn’t leave the house, and I lazed about all day. Did I really win?

It’s Arts and Crafts Time

Lately, I’ve been quite busy. For my sisters birthday, I gave her a little photo book/scrapbooky thing that I had made. It took a while to make, to find the best pictures, to match the best background paper to the picture, etc. When it was finished, I was a little proud of myself. I’d never done anything like this, but I finally attempted it, and at least I finished. The only creative thing I’ve done is just the cards – which I’m given instructions on, and have a card that’s already made that I get to look at the whole time, to see what I’m doing as I do it.

I was so proud of myself for getting that done that I made another one – but a bigger one. I wanted to do the same thing for PJ for her birthday, but instead of the accordion book I did for my sister I did a full-on book, with many pages, and all of them to be decorated. This book actually almost put me over the edge – there was just so much to be done with this one, but since I was a little more experienced with this book than the last, I felt a little better about it. It did take a lot of work this time around, but when I finished, the feeling of accomplishment was awesome.

Riding that wave of accomplishment, I decided to tackle another project, this one for myself. I had ordered a cube, to put pictures on. I had chosen to put pictures of myself and Husband on them. After much deliberation over pictures, colors, etc, and about 2 weeks of fretting, I finally got the pictures on there. I brought it to work to have Chelle help me with it. While I’m getting better at doing crafty things, I’m still nowhere near the level that Chelle is with all of this. She helped me put some great finishing touches on it, stuff for texture and just general cuteness to it. At the end of all of it, it looks like:

And there it is. Now that I’m done with it, I’m quite proud of it. It took a lot of work, and many, many papercuts/stamped fingers and gluing of my fingers to stuff, but now that its done, I really like it. I’m displaying the heck out of it on my desk. That was actually probably a good thing too, because until today, I had no pictures of Husband and myself. But now, I have many!