Tonight I watched Winter's Bone on the Netflix. Wow, it was really good, but now I need an injection of Prozac straight into my spinal column. Bleak. I mean, you know, the Ozarks, you have like forty dogs but no car, every adult in sight is cooking meth, what could possibly go wrong? I do recommend it, but it's intense. Jennifer Lawrence is the lead, and she has also been cast as the lead in Hunger Games. I remember some outcry over that, but after seeing her in Winter's Bone, I don't doubt that she will be good as Katniss. She can play tough. And I just realized she was the young Mystique in that X-Men movie earlier this summer? I didn't even notice her in that. It could have been that she was in a scene with Michael Fassbender and everything on screen was blown out by his ridiculous, excessive telegenicity.
Busy day here chez Matron. This morning I had a long tennis practice. A new girl has joined the team who might be worse than me. This is very exciting, the prospect of not being the weakest player on the team. Probably she will turn out to be a bit better than me though, we'll see.
Then I went home, where my parents and I finished painting my dining room ceiling and then tackled the now-vacant office. I had cozened them into leaving their mountain citadel, where temperatures are in the 70's, to come to my house and help me paint. I would say the two rooms were a solid day-and-a-half of work, and I haven't done the office ceiling yet.
I'm very happy with it. I'll have miraculous "after" pics soon, but the color is Behr's Dolphin Fin. I first saw this in my friend Erika's house in LA, and I've had it in mind for two years. It is a great gray, the Mama Bear of grays, as it is not too warm, not too blue, not too green, just right. For the ceiling I went with Irish Mist, which is a barely-there silvery gray on the same paint card.
Funny, when you're painting in your house, you really confront the mistakes made and shortcuts taken by the previous owners and their home improvement projects. I was affronted to realize that the entire underside of the chair rail on my dining room wall was smeared with red paint from some 1990's red dining room moment. Very sloppy work, first owners! There was lots of taping and edging and finally I sat on the floor with a child's paintbrush and scooted around the room until I couldn't see any more red. And the same with the tops of the window frames. I mean, can't we try a little harder?
That kept me and most of the household busy like bees all day. And Hank starts school tomorrow. Fingers crossed for a smooth launch! xoxo
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
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11 comments:
Your DIY projects make me feel a bit ashamed. The idea of painting a room is just so overwhelming. Maybe I should quit feeling ashamed and start feeling inspired. Stay tuned.
And I was one of the first people in the universe to see "Winter's Bone," I think -- and unable to convince anyone to do so because of the bleakness. But it was pretty great and Jennifer Lawrence was amazing. I just saw her in another movie on Netflix, but I can't recall what it was --
The glory of homeownershipness is the freedom to paint without masking tape and embrace the wabi of your craft bleeding into accidental art. At least, that's what I tell myself when the wall color gets on the ceiling and I don't feel like fixing it.
I like the thousands of tiny imperfections in a house. I feel like it's a metaphor for adulthood. Like, overall, it still gets you where you're going. (If where you're going is right where you are, I guess.)
I notice my own sloppiness more than that of the previous owners. And yet, I do nothing about it. Just realized over the weekend that our back door needs painting... not just because of the scuff marks, but because it came primed in white FIVE years ago and we never painted it.
I'm a total tape-masker too, Becky. But I have to laugh when I realize that a good bit of the sloppiness I tsk-tsk over was never noticed by me until the very moment of painting over it. And I am a noticin' kind of gal... just ask my husband.
Hootie, for years I've been waiting patiently for you to start your own blog. I think the time has come. How about if we all beg and promise to read you religiously? Or send cash? Puh-leez?
ps. "Cozen" was not on that list from the other day. But I think it should've been. And thank you for it!
Painting an already-occupied house is not for the faint of heart.
I too think Hootie should start a blog. I want to embrace the wabi of Hootie's craft! Full disclaimer: I don't even know Hootie. But I would like to hear more of Hootie's metaphors for adulthood.
When we went to paint our dining room, we discovered that the previous owner had put wallpaper right on top of old wallpaper. I was in charge of stripping the wallpaper while 800 months pregnant with my third child. The next time around we hired people to do that for us (removing the wallpaper, not the pregnancy).
Hootie, a friend of Becky's and our family from his childhood, is the fastest wit of anyone you are ever likely to meet. He ought to have a regular blog and if he doesn't start one, after this groundswell of aupport, it'll be a sign of selfish mean-spiritedness.
Aw shucks, you guys. Such kind words.
My wife will laugh when she reads these comments, because she knows that if there was ever anyone motivated by the promise of an audience, it's me. Like, if you ground me up and fed me to a planarian, it would immediately crawl toward a spotlight. And then start asking people where they were from.
And Camp Papa, you can speak at my funeral any day. Because you obviously have a solid handle on my selfish mean-spiritedness, and people should know the truth.
Once upon a time on a Friday night at like 5pm, I made a random and ill-informed decision to paint my guest bedroom. By myself. Like, I rejected other social opportunities in order to paint!
Let's just say it was a bad decision. I got her done, but I feel confident one day any new owners will "tsk tsk" over some parts of that room. Absolutely.
But then I will direct them to Hootie's yet-to-be-realized blog.
Ooh, the 1990's red dining room! We had it. Our closest friends bucked the trend and went navy blue.
Man, that red took so many coats to get right. And it was so FORMAL, which doesn't fit us at all. I wonder what I was thinking?
In a fit of pique, we bucked the trend of red dining rooms and made our living room red just as others with far more sophisticated tastes abandoned this notion. It is extremely formal, just like us.
I can't watch Winter's Bone because I'm from Missouri and therefore unable to get Sudafed at Target without a court order. Seriously, I would likely become jealous of a meth addict's unfettered access to over the counter meds.
Based on reader response and his own unadulterated hilarity within this comments section, Hootie appears a natural to fill the vast media void created by Oprah's departure.
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