Even now, the word is still debatable, but my relief is not.

Do interior painting even once and you learn the dance: tape up, paint up, tape down, patch areas of missing color with new wall color, patch areas of new-color overspray with the trim color. Get off ladder. Sleep.

Almost there, kid.

I started yanking the tape down in earnest at seven-thirty tonight, and within thirty minutes the striped Medusa pile lay in the entranceway, ready to grab the pants leg of anyone who ventured too close. After the tape was down, I picked up the bucket of red paint and began to clean up lines made ragged by the tape's removal.

After that was done, I thought about attempting the latter half of patching: taking the white and covering up the areas where the red extended just a little further than I would have liked. I realized that such things were best suited for sunlight, and could wait until the morning.

Morning. If I had made it this far, I could begin to think of packing up and heading home and indeed, once thought, the idea did not leave my mind the rest of the evening. Home: grey carpets, orange-and-white cats.

My friends accuse me of being a hermit, and I joyfully admit the truth of their allegations. Anyone who has seen me during one of my long-distance walkabouts knows I do it as much for the joy of discovery as I do for the immense, blissful comfort of the moment of return.

Will Kari like what we've done? I certainly hope so; we have used the colors she chose, and followed the opinions she gave to Jody, not knowing how attentively they were received. I except that she'll be a little shocked at the unexpected color change, but judging from the reaction of her mother to the unfinished product, I think I've managed to do a halfway decent job.

My color choices for rooms are, admittedly, somewhat limited, but even I have to admit that the warm yellow that Kari chose (a color I wouldn't even have considered) makes for a comforting, sunny kitchen. I thought it overly bright at first, but as the color spread from wall to wall, I was surprised to realize just how much less sterile the kitchen felt.

For yet another night, I appear to be wearing as much paint as I've applied; I fear I will be scratching paint off of my arms, out from under my fingernails, and off of my scalp for at least another day or two. While the red stains more, and makes me appear like the friendly local axe murderer, the yellow seems to predominate.

Apparently yellow paint just likes me.

Given morning sunlight, I will pop open the tub of white paint and fix the places where the red runneth over. That done, I will tidy up my workspace and re-pack my bag; depending on the time, Jody and I might have lunch, but after that, I'll head northwest.

On the way home, I'll reclaim the hour I lost when I crossed into the Eastern time zone. I plan to take it home and give it as a gift to Edmund, who undoubtedly will, as his wanton nature dictates, squander it in long moments of kneading and purring. Tenzing will require at least twenty minutes of having his ears gently fussed and stroked, and then he will bury himself in the crook of my leg and sleep for hours.

If I'm lucky, I'll remember to settle in with a book or a movie before the cats find me. I might as well be entertained while they extract apologies from me.

Sleep beckons. After an evening of precarious balancing on countertop while reaching over cabinets to paint between them and the ceiling, my body insists it is entitled.

Current music: Marvin Gaye, What's Going On
Damien Rice, O
Jimmy Eat World, Clarity

Bonus point #1 to childbirth: the end result provides you with one Eternally Good Guilt Trip card for the rest of your existence.

Bonus point #1 to furniture finishing: people look at you funny if you kick off your shoes and prop your feet up on your kids when company comes over. Bonus point #2: unless your table sets amazing new records for furniture intelligence, your college tuition costs are pretty much guaranteed to be nil.

Bonus point #2 to childbirth: grandtables are rare, and according to rumor, not nearly so satisfying as grandchildren.

You'll have to excuse me; the fumes from the varnish appear to be getting to me. (I suppose it's a bit late now to see if constant Eau Of Varnish inhalation is a known cancer risk, considering that we've already proven it's detrimental to mental stability.)

The slow progression of unfinished wood to staining to varnishing has been littered with up to three application sessions per day (midmorning, midafternoon, and then right before bed). I have a sneaking suspicion that I've spent so much time out on the front porch, playing with potentially carcinogenic compounds, that my brain has fallen completely off the oxygen wagon and decided to sleep in the nearest empty varnish can.

It probably likes the fumes by now.

The plan's worked something like this: stain work could be done in the morning and afternoon, because stain has taken less time to dry on this wood than the varnish has. Due to the cold, humid weather, pieces have needed up to 8 hours to dry between stain coats and 12 hours between varnish coats; a piece varnished and set out to dry by eleven a.m. can generally receive another coat of varnish around midnight.

Sleep.

Repeat.

("What?" I said to myself the other day. "It's Friday? When the hell did that happen? I thought it was Tuesday….oh…wait… There's no way I could apply two coats of stain and three coats of varnish to seven bits of wood and it only be Tuesday.")

Attempting to accomplish all this on days where the high temperature did not even reach 40F/5C could be termed as "entertaining." See also Exhibit A, otherwise known as an email to Noah:

"The past couple of days it's been so cold that I've had to keep the varnish indoors or it would freeze…and apply the varnish with gloved hands. Too cold to hold metal with bare hands…

The scary thing is that once this table is done, and in use in the reading room, it'll probably take a week before I'll be frothing at the mouth again to work on more furniture for the room.

"It's a sickness, I tell you. Those fumes are dangerous. They have lots of warnings on the can, none of which say, "May cause more furniture purchases than originally intended. Use with caution."

After all, there's absolutely nothing better to do in December than to stand outside in a stinking sweater, your husband's jacket, and other assorted outerwear pulled from the "too dirty to wear outside the house but not too dirty to do woodwork in" laundry pile, just to carefully slop a molasses-like liquid onto a wooden surface in something resembling an even fashion.

At one a.m., mind you.

The neighbors must think I'm crazy.

The top of the table just received coat number something-or-other of varnish. I'll get up in the morning, check the results, and unless perfection is magically achieved during the course of the night, it'll receive one more coat tomorrow morning. By tomorrow night, the furniture will be dry enough to handle, and I'm hoping beyond hope that tomorrow morning's coat will be the last, so that we can assemble the table tomorrow night.

By now, after a week of practice, I fervently believe that a one a.m. varnish application in the middle of winter falls squarely into that category of life events marked "Do once, crow, move on, and don't be stupid enough to do it again."

That is, until I get those matching end tables to go with the coffee table…

There were no overnight miracles. The tabletop received another coat of varnish - which should, hopefully, be its last.

My spouse also pointed out that the frustration and near-desperation of this entry reminded him of the amusing-yet-terrifying entries for the period of days in December 2000 when I was stranded, by myself, in a hotel in the middle of an Arkansas ice storm. If you're new to this 'From The Hotel' series, use the 'next entry' link at the bottom of the entry I've linked to read the progression I made from boredom to tedium to something more akin to acute psychosis. (As with the case of the table, about two hours after it was over, I was restored to my normal state.)

The floor, at that particular moment, was nothing but concrete. Our first task after taking possession of our new house was to rip up every shred of carpeting, to prepare the house for the laying-down of newer, better carpet. We'd chosen to sink some extra money into the carpet allowance we'd received from the previous owners, and we intended to get good-quality carpeting with thick padding.Our voices echoed off the walls, the concrete, the ceiling. When we walked around, the steps echoed throughout the house, and we sat there on the edge of the step, looking around at this building—floors, windows, ceilings, fans, doors—in wonder and astonishment because it was ours.

The first meal in one's new house is an event to be remembered and laughed about. There will be others, but none have the rawness, the excitement, the frustration of the first one.

Before we took possession of the house, I told my mother that our first meal was going to be 'pizza on the china'—yes, takeout pizza on the lovely, translucent ivory-and-blue china that Jeff and I had selected during our engagement. I loved the dichotomy of the two images: the greasy, cheesy pizza we'd lived on as college students; the cultured refinement of bone china given as wedding gifts.

When it came time to take possession of the house, I made sure to leave two plates unpacked so that Jeff and I could eat off of them. We slopped the pieces of pizza from box to plate and ate it there, laughing with the giddiness of knowing that the house—and the resulting mortgage—were ours, ours, ours.

Kat and Sean began moving into their condo today. We were alone, Kat and I, when we settled down to eat some lunch: taco salad from her crockpot. We piled our soup with sour cream and cheese, and took our drinks and a bag of Fritos over to the north window.

In the sunlight she sat; I sprawled. We dipped chips in the soup and ate slowly, resting, while talking of plans for their new home. The newly-cleaned carpet was damp beneath my arms. Beside me, Kat stared outside with a quietly pleased look on her face that, for more reasons than one, reminded me of how Jeff and I must have looked while daring to use our fanciest china with takeout to celebrate our first meal in our first house.

Never mind the fact that the room around us was piled with boxes, or that the fridge wasn't going to arrive until tomorrow, or that there weren't even any beds set up yet. It was hers. Given time, the house would sort itself out.