For many people, I might even say most people, the prospect of traveling abroad is exciting and fun, and not in the least bit full of terrifying anxiety. Well, that's great and all, but for a select few of us, thinking about hopping on that plane and going to a far off land where they speak a language that is allegedly the same one that I speak but is obviously not the same, it's the most scary thing ever.
And what does one do, when one is trying NOT to act like they are completely anxious?
They become a manic insomniac who can't stop cleaning things and never sleeps and wants simultaneously to kill everyone and to be cuddled. Enter the daunting and unending project of trying to repaint my childhood bedroom (bear in mind, that this is the worst idea ever, because now, upon my return from The Dreaded Trip, I'll be sleeping in an equally foreign new bedroom). Gone will be the days of the hot pink bedroom! Say hello to the new days of a cream and teal bedroom! *Sophistication!* *Adulthood!* *Increased Resale Value!*
Ok, that's great, but mostly, it's been a never ending project that began by me unloading at least a thousand dollars worth of stuff out of my room. Clothes and shoes mostly, but also jewelry, trinkets, and mementos from life that were put into tubs for long term storage. Oh God, I think some books actually LEFT my private library to go to charity. Additionally, horrifically, I was convinced into moving my two cherished bookcases out of my room and into -- communal living spaces. They cringe at the suggestion.
That was all day Saturday. Sunday I began coming down with a cold that was only exacerbated by the level of dust in my room, but I soldiered on, bought paint and found materials, and moved everything out of my room except the bed frame (spoiler alert, that will be a terrible idea), and the giant shelving unit that holds all my folded clothes. I would live to regret leaving both of those objects in my room, because if they were too big a pain to move before painting began, I don't know what made me believe that they wouldn't be even more annoying once the painting started.
Monday, however, I was supposed to go to work, but the cold I was brewing caught up with me, and the day was mostly wasted napping and sniffing instead. My boyfriend, Chris, came over to help, and I started to feel better by the end of the day, and began the task of caulking the trim that had never been finished in my rush to move into my room the first time. The BF is a finish carpenter's apprentice, and was supposed to help with the finishing that needed doing. As a finish carpenter, however, he usually leaves caulking of trim etc to the painters. So his help was somewhat less than helpful, and was in fact very messy, and eventually we had caulk everywhere. To smooth the edges of our hellacious caulking job, we wiped the trim down with wet clothes. By the end of it, we had very dirty fingers and a bucket full of caulk water. I'm not making this up. Many jokes were made.
Side note, we have had some of the most incredibly hot weather this summer, and my small room is a veritable pressure cooker in the summer. This is not the environment for emotionally supportive home improvement projects. Things were said in that room that I cannot take back. (Sorry Chris.)
I ended up doing all the caulking myself (so typical) until about midnight and then I fell into bed and thankfully was exhausted enough to sleep.
Tuesday I was healthy enough for work, so I did my actual job, and came home to do a coat of primer. This primer was quite old, and had separated a little, so it did a rather poor job of covering the hot pink. But it got done, and we moved the set of shelves out of my room to better paint the ceiling. Now, I was attempting to enlist the help of two studly men for this task -- that is, my boyfriend and my brother. In their infinite wisdom, they decided not to move the bedframe (which also needs to be sanded and painted), and instead, the brother left without moving anything. Quite a bit later, I got fed up moving the shelves around, so Chris and I slid the whole thing out on its side to get it out of my room. Presently, there's a massive cabinet of shelves obstructing the path to my room, and I can't get the bedframe out, so that's still unlikely to be sanded or painted in the near future.
Wednesday is when it gets really horrible. I bought a teal color, Embellished Blue, for the west wall and the edge of the east wall that surrounds my built in closet. I also bought a light cream color for the other walls and the ceiling, Angel Food. One coat of Angel Food was going on really well, and Chris and I were doing a really good job, and everything was clean, and then tragically, Chris spilled a bunch of white paint on my brown carpet.
This is not an incredibly terrible tragedy, because the paint cleans up with soap and water, and honestly, the stain is gone, so it's not a big deal. But it's a mood killer, and a roll-breaker, and a parade rainer. And now I might have to murder Chris. (Sorry Chris.) Manic Insomniac Sierra can't deal with these types of setbacks. The particularly maddening part is that he's not a very effective cleaner, and obviously has never spilled paint on the carpet before (I admit nothing). Carpet needs to be blotted, not scrubbed. That's all I'll say.
Anyway, the existence of a paint stain led to a massive argument, not related to the paint at all, and exclusively fueled by my hangover-cold, the heat, exhaustion from sleep deprivation, and absolute insane anxiety, and the fact that every single male to walk the face of the earth is just so damn annoying. This argument actually happened much later over the phone, long after he had left, which provided me time to (very aggressively) paint a swatch of Embellished Blue next to the Angel Food while I gave unnecessary ultimatums and threatened to hang up and never talk to him again. I do not deny how incredibly overly dramatic I am.
I realized that I hate both of these colors.
Angel Food is code for white. Embellished Blue is code for just plain old standard baby blue. And I hate both of them. A white ceiling is ok, and fully permissible. But there's a reason I had a hot pink bedroom to start off with. I'm a bright color kind of girl. And this white and baby blue crap is not going to fly. So I'll be taking the Angel Food back and retinting to get it closer to something that contains pigment. We'll see about the blue, with a decent color near it, it might not be so bad. I'll reserve judgement, but I think it needs to go too.
Basically, this is the final piece of evidence that I hate everything, and nothing is going my way, and oh good Lord, I had to register with the State Department today, and I'm denying that a trip is impending. I'm an Impending-Travel Denier -- like a holocaust denier, but, you know, on a much smaller scale, and in no way at all like a holocaust denier.
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