Sometimes I copy myself

Vacation, day seven. As planned, there has been ironing, cleaning, painting, picture hanging, a new roof, trips to the vet, grocery shopping, obscene amounts of TV and Internet, lundry, weight gain, watering the garden, fixing a few mechanical things, etc.

I bought a copy of "O" magazine and I have been able to concentrate enough to read three articles. The Suze Orman column always makes me feel like a loser of epic proportions.

Frank took off from work two days this week. I thought it was to do something vacationy with me, but as it turns out, he took this time so we could paint the living room, dining room, hallway, and anything else we can accomplish. I told Frank I could do the painting alone, but he was quite uncomfortable with that idea. And this is where I let my email tell it. I told it all to Jolie who may or may not even be reading my messages since she feels pretty unwell herself these days. Here's what I told her:

Anyway...I wanted to do this myself during my vacation time. Frank would have none of it. He insisted that he knows exactly what we should do, he wants to spackle a certain way(?), and he knows how to paint, blah, bah, blah... Here's the thing. I don't like to paint, but I am very, very good at it. I'm experienced, careful, detailed, and my technique is nearly flawless. I know a lot of good tricks and my prep work is excellent. I'm slow, but the end result looks very professional. Frank is not a very good painter. He doesn't listen to anything I say, he thinks I overthink the whole process, and he says his way is just fine. I don't know why Frank doesn't trust me to paint. It's not a life-or-death, no-going-back process, you know?

Here's how today went:
We didn't prime even though we're going over semigloss paint that had approximately 100 matte spackle spots. "This is good paint going over off-white walls. We don't need to prime."
Frank painted the ceiling a few weeks ago, so he knew exactly where all of the rollers were. The first one we tried to use still had water in it. I said, "did you leave this standing upright to dry?" "Uh, I don't remember. Maybe not. It felt dry so I put it away in the big plastic bag with the others." That meant that not only hadn't the water drained, but it had no way to completely dry out.

When Frank painted the ceiling, there were about 10 little shiny spots showing where he hadn't completely covered with the paint. When we were painting today, the same thing was happening. First he said it wasn't but it was obvious. So, he said he didn't understand why this was happening. I asked if uses the V pattern when he paints. He assured me he does. I watched him, and he doesn't.

I don't know if you've done any painting, but here's what you're supposed to do: Paint a "V about three feet wide. Using horizontal strokes, paint from the top of the V to the bottom so you're left with a squarish rectangle. Then, paint over the square with vertical strokes. It's done this way because it ensures total coverage of each wall section in all directions. It's not rocket science--the directions are printed on the can label. So, there are little, shiny white spots showing through the wall paint. I also told Frank that this show-through happens if the roller has any flat spots. Guess what--the roller wasn't stored standing up, either. Why, why, why doesn't he believe what I tell him???

I noticed today that he hit some spots on the ceiling. He told me it's not a problem because he has to touch up the spots he missed with the ceiling paint anyway.

More fun on Friday. Maybe I'll just take myself out to a movie.