Apologies to those seeing this repeated from fb, but I'm too damned loopy from Too Much and too little food today:
It is DONE.* 4 years ago, I spent 5 months chemically stripping 80 years of paint off of the banister, 53 spindles and 3 posts. Scraping, peeling, scrubbing. It was revolting and satisfying. Starting this February, I sanded down the whole thing. I now own 4 different types of sanders/grinders. Then it was scrubbing it all down, picking a stain combo. Stain, stain in poly, a golden tinted floor varathane, followed by a coat of super-hard-finish varathane floor finish on all three posts and the handrails. (It was a custom job, clearly! Had to be, some parts took color differently.) Then prime all (very thirtsty) 53 spindles. And finally, paint all 53 of those spindles. And that's all done Done DONE! (barring the cats brushing up against wet paint tonight.)
And you know what? No modesty here, it is fucking beautiful. It was a lot of work and exercised every bit of patience I contain and then some. ** I had to learn a lot, and I was going all on faith that there was good wood under there to be revealed and put on display. And that I wouldn't fuck it up, which given my track record with manual labor, is no sure thing. ***
But staring up at it now, I did good. It's something I'm proud of.
Also, I clearly have a brush problem.
*I've still got tiny touch-ups to do, blips only I might notice. And to repaint the wall where I fumbled the stain brush one night, and trim up the wall paint where they merge with the walls, etc. But all little things, a few minutes, not hours spread over days.
** Sorry, not for hire. I could only manage this level of focus and dedication for something I see everyday and OWN. [ed: this was directed at some of my local friends who have been teasing that they want me to do theirs.]
*** Well, I did ruin more than a few manicures and pedicures. And my working schlub clothes have more than a few paint or stain stains. (I swear I got more paint on me and splatters/fumbles tonight than in any of the months spent on this in the past. Homestretch euphoria? )
Very exciting, Sara!
Sorry, Tom. Good luck. Maybe next time just mail a card and don't call?
Good stuff, Burrell!
Good lord, Ginger. What a thing.
I'm sorry you are in that situation, Tom. Can you not think about it until it's upon you? I know that's not easy to do and maybe not actually helpful, but it would be nice if whatever unpleasantness tomorrow brings didn't bleed over into today.
I like -t's suggestion, Tom, and also? Have a script. When it deviates in a negative fashion from script, return to script until script is done and decamp.
Tom - I do not at all like that she has put upon the equation of calling with caring. You know what? You care about yourself also and you finally are in a place where you will put your emotional well being first sometimes. How would she like it if you said to her, "well, you don't care about me if you call just to yell at me"?
Tuesday's dental work didn't resolve all the mouth pain. At first I thought my mouth was just sore from all the work done, but it hasn't faded at all. I've been living on Ibuprofen and Orajel for the last few days. I'll leave a message tomorrow and hopefully can get in early on Monday.
It is so frustrating cause I can't narrow it down to which tooth. My bottom molars have had root canals and the front teeth didn't show any problems when the xrayed them last week. But I can tell immediately when the Ibuprofen has worn off.
Not on the level of many other Buffistas but had a stressful few days, though have now gotten it straightened out. I had an article accepted last year in a peer reviewed journal. They have a policy that while, for understandable reasons, they don't want accepted articles released into the wilds of the internet, they are fine with an article author writing another article covering the same topic. Thursday I got a nastygram from them telling me I had released the article into the wild and to take it down or they would not publish me. The article they referred to was actually a popular article on the same topic. So I sent them a link. They told me that they "understood" that the popular article I had published was the same one they had accepted with a new title. This time I sent them pdfs as attachments to the email of the article they had accepted and of the one I had posted. I asked them if she really thought the second was the same one under a different title or even too close to the first.I copied in the editor who was writing me's boss. Finally, Saturday afternoon, she wrote me to say that the two articles were different enough and that she would proceed with publication without taking the popular article down. She had sent me the nastygram without ever reading the popular article. Somebody must have told her they were the same, and she took their word for it.
So it is straightened out, but still did not need the addition to my stress level. Also, if an editor is going to charge her author with self-plagiarism and copyright violation, shouldn't she actually read or at least skim the supposedly plagiarized article?
Oh yes, that's on her, and very unprofessional at that.
Tom, want me to call your mother and explain what a negative feedback loop is? That every time she makes it an onerous burden to call her because she's nasty, that makes it less likely you are to call her? Because that's what she's accomplishing with her attitude.
HaHA! I got up, had breakfast, and then sat on the back porch to do my work, and now it's done! I knew it wouldn't take long, and sitting on the porch is very pleasant.
