Glibbertysmidgeon

I can’t feel my right thumb.

This makes it difficult to open my yogurt container. This puts me in a foul mood right off the bat, as I missed dinner last night, and breakfast this morning. If I don’t eat something very large today, I’m likely to become quite grouchy.

I believe it’s an overuse injury- the thumb, I mean.

Yesterday, we were painting our new apartment from 11 a.m. until 1 a.m. with only one break for Chineese takeout around 4. We could have gone longer, I think, but when my arm fell off, it made such a thud that the new future-downstairs-neighbors started banging on their ceiling and we decided to go home.

It was my idea to do the painting ourselves. Our contractor had bid on the job, but I thought we’d save some money and have a little fun getting artsy. I’ve painted lots of places, and I knew I was letting us in for some work, but I didn’t expect it to be this hard. Now that I think of it, I’ve never tried to paint an entire apartment while working full time with no help from friends. We have spent two entire weekends on it- morning to night all four days- and we’re miles from finished.

To complicate things, I have friends coming in from Washington State on Friday, and I’d planned on hosting them in our new 2 bedroom apartment, instead of our current 1 bedroom rental.

So we painted hard. Really hard. The palms of my hands are sore from holding the roller, and my legs are bruised and aching from all those trips up the ladder.

For two solid weeks, we’ve done nothing but go to work, visit hardware stores, eat, paint, and sleep. We haven’t packed. We haven’t shopped (hence the missed meals). We haven’t cleaned our home. I did laundry in the new apartment while we were painting. But then the washer started leaking, so I had to give that up.

When we left last night, there were at least two more days of work remaining.
As we staggered to the car, Kris said,

“It’s not turning out the way I’d hoped.”

He was speaking of the faux finish we had just spent 6 hours applying to our living room walls. Reluctantly, I agreed. It’s too dark, and too busy. We were going for something more subtle and warm.

With two closets, three ceilings, and a houseful of trim still unpainted, the idea of redoing the living room was just too much.

“Maybe we should call Mike”

We called our contractor this morning, and he agreed to meet us at the apartment tomorrow night to plan.

I should feel relieved. No more painting, no more late nights. No more empty fridge. We can stay home and pack now.

But I feel blue. I keep thinking to myself,

“You should have known this would happen. ”

“If you had hired him from the start it would probably be done by now AND you would have had time to pack. ”

“Now Kelly is coming and it feels like you’re going to be ill from all the stress and lack of sleep.”

” Now you won’t be moved on time, and she’ll have to stay in the old apartment. Everything is half packed and it’s just going to be a wreak.”

Then, my inner critic winds up for the knockout punch:

“Because of your bad judgement, you’re going to spend the money, and you’ve wasted all this time. You could have had these last two weekends, but now you’ve lost your weekends AND your money.”

I want to crawl inside a hole.

Nobody knows how to beat up on me better than me.