the painted lady : actually, a tattoo shop at my alma mater

I'm spending my day painting the kitchen (with several Internet breaks an hour to maintain sanity), one of the final steps to the Great Kitchen Remodeling Fucksaster '06. The N has been missing since Saturday morning, where in a string of curse words unheard since the days of Dice Clay, he finally got the sink attached and running. He then packed a duffel bag and told me he was heading for Richmond, and I SHIT YOU NOT, I have not seen him since. His phone is also turned off. Home remodeling? I'm gonna put $20 on that being Kate Hudson and Black Crows Guy's final straw.

So, I'm priming, a major pain in the ass but an unquestionable step in the painting process (see below). The dog is attempting to attack the Comcast guy through our heavy wooden front door. I have had coffee. It is Sunday, and all is right with the world, except for the fact that somewhere along 95, my spouse may be lying in a ditch.

Before this modernizing transformation, we had painted the cooking room in the soothing tones of bright white and turquoise, plenty obnoxious in a "We're a Bunch of White Kids Who Went to Belize and All We Brought Back Was Rum and Terrible Decorating Aesthetics" kind of way. But we were young, poor, sunburned, kind of drunk, in love newlyweds; and thusly I adored our dumb kitchen, in a hateful kind of way ("We're changing this as soon as we move in.") It was the first kitchen we owned, and even thought the stove was a relic I have never seen anywhere else but our neighborhood (named "The Debutante," it may have been upwards of 40 years old), I loved the room. Now, our kitchen is sleek and has pretty Dupont-created countertops, which will probably emit chemicals to give us and the dog brain tumors, instead of the yellowing formica stained with what I can only assume was a past owner's blood mixed with ballpoint ink. (Our dinner parties were AWESOME.)

So here I am, painting. I am pretty good at painting. I have painted a lot in my young life, and why I see the thought process that goes into hiring someone to paint your house, I don't think I'd ever do it. My father, a teacher, painted houses during the summers of my childhood when he wasn't terrorizing his children by throwing them in the pool and telling them they needed to "swim or drown." I worked for a construction company one sumer during college as a office manager, and one of my jobs turned out to be painting the office. Not your typical secretarial job, but I def. preferred it to paystub filing and answering phones, which renders me slightly retarded. ("um, yo, what you want?")

Listen now and listen hard, people, otherwise we might have to break up: you prime everything before painting. Everything. Yes, even the white walls. I just flipped past some godawful TLC program and they were PAINTING A WALL A DARK COLOR WITHOUT PRIMING and I almost flipped my shit. That is unacceptable.

Okay, that is all. I don't know how to end this entry on home remodeling. Perhaps I will paint a giant mural of a skull breathing fire next to the stove while I'm at it, or an airbrushed mural of like, Skynyrd.

Adios big green walls. I will miss you. But not you, Debutante. I hated your ass.