Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate it. Me, I’m about as religious as a doorknob and I prefer to keep it that way. :) 

We set the bombs off yesterday and went to Jack-n-the-Box where we got breakfast platters with bacon, eggs, hash browns and pancakes. The only place I don’t worry about my cholesterol is when I’m eating out and that’s only a few times a month. 

After breakfast, we went to Goodwill where I got some flavored lip balms, a patchouli-scented dangly thing for the car, a Japanese geisha doll in a red kimono, and a black fairy figurine. It all came to less than $10. 

We didn’t paint yesterday, but Tom’s going to be touching up the living room while I’m doing the master bedroom. Really wish I could be tall if only for this project, but no, God just had to make me short just like He had to go and sic all kinds of other shit on me. Like why does it always have to be those next to ME that have to come and go all day? Before 8am yesterday, next door had already come and gone twice. By 1pm they’d come and gone 4 times. If there were any more trips after that, I lost count. Their SUV isn’t that loud but the car doors thumping can get old. Technically, though, 2-4 trips in and out is normal. What’s not is the others around us that go out 0-1 times a day. 

Andy suggested getting a petition going to reduce the daily landscaping to once a week, but as I explained to him again, it wouldn’t do us any good because the park is so big and there are many homes. Besides, one day might not work for everyone. Some people want to be home to either do their own landscaping or oversee those that are doing it and that one particular day may not be good for them. As for the park, I doubt they could afford to hire 100 people to do it once a week. They do it in sections instead, so I don’t hear the park employees every day but I do hear someone somewhere landscaping just about every day. 

The only time I hear the park every day is in the fall when the trees are losing their leaves. They may not do the common inner areas every day, but the greenbelt along the perimeters gets done daily in the fall. That much is overkill for sure. I don’t understand why they need to stand there ready to catch every single leaf as it falls. They’re just leaves! Leaves never harmed anyone. 

Nonetheless, there are simply too many homes and too much common area to reduce the park and the individual owners to just once a week, and while it can get annoying as hell, it’s better than 12-hour barking sprees, welfare bums, gangs, screaming kids, and loud car stereos blasting. No place is totally soundless anyway. Just gotta make the best of it. Today’s Sunday, though, so I definitely won’t hear from the park people. The homeowners maybe, but not the park. 

Another thing they’ve been annoying me with lately is the home improvements. I’ve been hearing a lot of hammering and banging and that can be distracting when you’re trying to write a book. I sometimes put the sound machine on during the daytime. Tom thought the banging we could hear on Friday was some sort of construction going on somewhere. I don’t know what it was, but yes, the buzzing, blowing, mowing, trimming, edging, thumping, hammering, banging and slamming can get a bit old at times. 

Later… 

I now have a gorgeous minty green bedroom. It’s way more beautiful than I thought it’d be. There’s always a slight worry that a color that looks good online or on a piece of paper, but not quite as good on the wall. Like with the second bedroom. It’s gorgeous, all right, but I should’ve gone with just lavender instead of pale lavender cuz it’s lighter than I thought it would be. 

I almost got Mint Shake for the master bedroom instead of Minty Green and I’m glad I didn’t. I rolled the paint on most of the walls by myself, which was a little tough, but not too bad. If only we didn’t have those damn grooves and strips on the panel boards! That’d cut the time in half right there. Tom’s helping with edging up by the ceiling. 

I totally see what he meant when he said it’s hard to cover the paneling that has never been painted. It’s like the paint “slides” and it causes streaking. Even with the Glidden Duo, which has primer in it, we’ll need to hit that back wall twice. The laundry room is going to be a nightmare because none of it has ever been painted before. 

The easy part was edging along with a small brush. I’m a little pissed that we got two gallons when all we needed was one despite how big that room is. That’s $30 wasted. 

Tom thinks the carpet is 15 years old and not 30 because the white paint we covered seems to go all the way down to the floor. The last people probably ripped the carpet out, painted most of the walls, and then installed this brown crappy carpet. Can’t wait to get rid of it but not until the painting is done. At least where the old carpet is. All that’s left to paint that has old carpet is the hallway. 

Gonna paint the cabinet door and built-in drawers in the bedroom yellow, but am not sure we’ll bother painting the upper quarter rounds yellow. Either way, it will be the citrus room without the nasty taste. The deep pink curtains will contrast nicely with the green and yellow. Not going to take many pics, though, till the new carpet and dresser are in.