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Monday, September 19, 2005

All work, very little play

What an exhausting weekend. We finally got going on the project that we have been putting off for more than a year, which would be the painting of all the outside trim on our house. For some reason the previous owners (or possibly the ones before them) went through and painted only the trim on the front and sides of the house (in a color that we dislike by the way), leaving the back of the house a completely different color. So, on the back of the house we’ve got a bunch of rotting window frames, exposed wood, and a whole lot of other stuff going on that I can’t really explain because I tend to zone out when Dan is explaining it all to me. (Hey, conversations involving manual labor and tools whose uses are completely foreign to me don’t exactly capture my full attention.) Anyways, so we had set aside this weekend strictly for this project, we enlisted some family members who agreed to help out, and we got going already on Friday night with the scraping of wood trim, in preparation for priming. To be honest, I wasn’t very enthusiastic about things on Friday; I was tired from a long week at work and the last thing I wanted to do was get all dirty and sweaty outside. So I stalled a little at the beginning, I did some dishes inside, swept the kitchen floor, wandered around the house, offered the boys water and Diet Coke, but there was no fooling that crafty husband of mine, he saw right through my lazy crap and ordered me outside. Thus began my foray into doing work around the house that requires me to be outdoors and leaves me bearing a somewhat repugnant stench.

Saturday and Sunday were much of the same. We got up at 6:30 AM and were out working by 7:00 both mornings. So much for sleeping in on the weekend, huh? I’m so glad we worked as hard as we did though, because it’s considerably easier to keep it up when you are seeing actual progress being made. Dan and I are taking off work tomorrow to get another full day in, and my wonderful parents also offered to help. Our goal is to finish the whole house with two coats before winter, and knowing Minnesota weather, that doesn’t give us much time, so we have to take these beautiful days when we can get them!

If you can believe it, amidst all of the damn work we were doing on our house this weekend, we were also able to fit in drinks and a bite to eat with some friends on Friday night (mmm… spinach artichoke dip and cheap beer), about 7 episodes of Lost (I am 100% without-a-doubt obsessed with that show now, I really hope we can finish season 1 before the season 2 premier on Wednesday), dinner with my parents on Saturday night (mmm… grilled salmon), and our much anticipated belly dancing performance on Sunday evening. The belly dancing thing (called a “Hafla”) went great, by the way, and Bets and I had so many friends and family members there, I felt very humbled by their kindness and support, (even though I suspect a few of them secretly think our new little hobby is a bit crazy). I fear the next step will be our purchase of full on belly dancing costumes, at which point we will have officially crossed over from the “I do it because it’s a fun and different form of exercise” mindset into the “Let’s choreograph our own duet dance for the next Hafla” frame of mind. ;)

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