Muddin’ at Midnight

The things we do for our relatives.

I just spent a chunk of the evening spackling holes in walls, some of them nail holes and some of them strange holes revealed after the wife stripped the wallpaper.

See, everyone’s got this hair up their ass to “fix” my house. The wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom is ugly. The wallpaper in the upstairs bathroom has been painted over — possibly twice — and is starting to peel at the edges. The wallpaper in the kitchen has apples all over it, a theme my wife is apparently unable to escape as there were apples painted on the cabinets in the last wall. Our hallways are painted a nasty maroon color. The laundry room is a few shades darker than pink. (Why anyone gives a shit what a laundry room looks like is beyond me, but The Wife has spoken. See the foot? It’s down. My ass certainly isn’t going under it.) There’s not a damn thing wrong with the living room, but it’s getting painted, too.

I could live with most, if not all, of it. I’ve got four walls, a roof, and an aversion to guests. But everyone who comes through talks about how ugly it is, and says this needs to be done and that should be done and maybe we could do some other thing. And if we do it now — as opposed to, say, when Uncle Sam sends us a tax rebate — we get to host a bridal shower.
I can hardly contain my excitement. I may even wet my pants.

My creditors are already drooling as they see the receipts roll in.
On the plus side, there’s a legion of relatives coming down to take help out. And my ass gets to be out of state with the Midget and the Squirt to keep all three of us out of trouble and out of the way anyway.

On the down side, there’s still plenty of prep work: mudding, sanding, stripping, moving furniture, and removing fixtures. All when the kids are in bed and out of the way (believe me, four-year-old “help” is sometimes anything but). Thus I found myself mudding at midnight.
And some of you gave me shit about backing out of NaNoWriMo this year…