hey, i haven't said it in a while...

i really hate the previous owners of this house.

every time i think i'm on top of the house issues, i discover something else that makes me want to scream. 2 years in to owning this place and it's still going on.

this weekend i'm going to start doing an overhaul on the 3rd bedroom, which i've hated from the moment i moved in... it used to be their baby's room, and they really went all out with the ugly colors -- dusty blue, dirty pink, and mustard yellow. every surface in the room, including the ceiling, is glopped thick with bad colors of really cheap paint. then there were the glow-in-the-dark stars that they put all over the ceiling -- a few weeks ago i pried off the ones i could reach, which took chunks out of the blue ceiling paint. so when jack came over last night to help pry off the remaining ones and putty the holes, i was crossing my fingers that we could do it easily, and that'd be it.

of course not.

issue #1: we discovered that the thick gloppy paint was painted over wallpaper. i had thought that the couple of peeling out-of-reach things i saw were paint, NOPE! it was peeling wallpaper. instead of steaming off the old wallpaper before they painted, they took the lazy route and just slapped on several coats of paint. and i just don't have the money to pay a professional come over and clean up those walls, steaming off the wallpaper through the paint and sanding everything down to start with a clean slate. so we have to add to the paintlayers. sigh. trying to clean up those peels in order to make it decent for painting meant having to tear chunks out of certain areas and then putty it. but hopefully that'll hold everything together and it'll be at least better than it was before.

issue #2: for reasons i don't understand, there was some sort of rubbery adhesive that was spread from top to bottom along both slides of the doorjam. it almost looked like they had used rubber cement instead of caulk. so i spent 90 minutes last night rolling off little boogers of yellowish glue all the way down the door; i actually have blisters on several fingers this morning. while i was tediously picking it all off, i flashed back to what my painter had said soon after i moved in: "these people ruined your house and left you to fix it". jack's quote: "if you ever meet the realtor who listed this house, slap them in the face."

in a sliver of good news, jack and i pried up a corner of the ugly blue carpet in there and discovered that the hardwoods underneath are in pretty good condition. so i'm going to cancel the carpet i'd just ordered and we're going to expose the wood floors instead. that'll save me about $600 and the floors will match the rest of the house. whew.

have a few bucks and a few minutes on your hands? want to get your website out there a bit more?

then check this out : the big word project. basically these guys are re-writing the dictionary, and allowing people to define all of the words by buying them for $1 a letter. so you "buy" a word, and link the word to your website. your website becomes the definition.

i think it's a hoot. last night i bought 3 words: hoops, hooping, and tailspin. all of them link to tailspinhoops.com. hee!

random thoughts on a friday afternoon

* being loved is: opening a can of mixed nuts you have in your cupboard, to discover that your boyfriend ate all the nuts you don't really like and left you all the ones you do. awwwwwwwww.

* yesterday i started back on my "no refined carbs and excessive crap" eating plan, that was working well with weight watchers earlier this year. i'd forgotten just what happens to your body when you go from a lot of refined sugar to very little -- today i swung from feeling exhausted to feeling almost high and then getting a burst of energy... then right back to exhausted. i know it'll even out in a day or two, but whoa.

* i totally forgot this, but last night i had a dream that i had a big garage/shed behind my house that was in a state of total disrepair... i walked into it (i hadn't been in it in a long time) and the place was overrun with raccoons -- there were holes dug into the floor, the smell of pee was overwhelming, and these fat masked raccoons were lumbering around everywhere. and there was something with martha steart, she was there tsk-tsking what a bad homeowner i was. and i was looking at how awful it was, wondering how i was going to fix everything and get rid of the raccoons. house stress much? "beales of grey gardens" much?

* i'm holding off on painting this weekend. i'm going to do a lot of the prep, but jack told his co-worker (whose partner is a painter) about my spare bedroom and she's going to run it by him before i do anything. i have to keep telling myself that it's better do fix those evil people's mistakes and leave the house better than when i bought it, than just patch up what they did. sigh.