On the upkeep of houses

I do love a good chore:  hard work is good for the soul.  I like most of my regular chores and get a lot of joy in doing them well.  I am also aware that I may take a bit too much pride in the work that I do, and I'm working on that.  It's amazing how allowing others to help--especially when they are younger/less able tames that sense of pride in one's house.

Other chores are opportunities for penance.  I mean it.  There are ones I have to actively pray while  doing them to ensure that I won't get lazy or careless.  It takes a whole lot of prayer and dedication to clean my oven, for example.  It does get cleaned, though, and now that I have a "self-cleaning" one--something I never had before--I make myself do it at the start of each new season.  My summer cleaning is coming up.

Then there are just plain odious chores.  Like painting.  I hate painting, I've discovered.  Much to my dismay, too, because I always envisioned myself blissfully rolling away, lost in the rhythm of the smooth paint.

Then I actually painted.

When we first bought our house, our bedroom was kind of like "French boudoir" meets "Breastfed-baby poo."  It was ridiculous.  They had even painted the trim that hideous mustardy-yellow.  It had to be painted.  I needed to be able to see if the baby had actually pooped on the wall (I'm not even being funny here.  One of our babies--not giving away names--got the unfortunate nickname of "poop-gun" from a sibling because of her ability to fire as soon as the diaper came off).  No problem, I thought.  We waited till Home Depot ran that paint rebate sale, picked up some cans and prepared to transform our bedroom into something more peaceful.

The preparing is what tipped me off.  You have to take everything down, clean the walls, tape up this, cover that.  It took more than a day to get everything ready.  The actual painting is even more painful.  "Cutting in"?  A torment straight from hell.  Rolling on evenly?  By the time I got to that point, I didn't even care.

I just finished staining our playscape with Foo-Foo and painting the ceiling in his room.  (I had to paint that because when I painted his room 3 years ago, I was so sick of painting that I didn't bother taping and botched the whole ceiling line.  I've been putting off fixing it for a while, but the time had definitely come.)  I can tell that I won't be able to turn my head or look at the stars any time soon.  There may be a permanent pinch in my shoulders and neck from this most recent painting endeavor.  On the upside, my prayer life got a good infusion today.

I've heard that paint can last decades, and I'm counting on it.  I hate doing it, and if I had a few extra bucks, I'd happily pay someone to do it for me.