Monday, August 25, 2008

Just call me Suzie Homemaker Disaster

I have been talking about painting my downstairs bathroom for a long time now; and yesterday I finally did it. I drove to my neighborhood Lowe's and got an instant endorphine rush. It reminded me of my old days of being a night nurse and having nothing better to do during my 4 days off than work on house projects. I am not the best about planning these projects either- I'm more spontaneous. I wait until I get to the store and then pick whatever looks right to me (this is not good, I know). As I walked up and down the aisles I saw a bird feeder and decided that we HAD to have a bird feeder. While waiting for my paint to be mixed I picked out the "perfect" bird feeder, seeds, and stand. I skipped on home and just gleamed with my visions of watching birds flock to our back yard. Ross helped me set up the stand, which just needs to be stabbed into the ground. I filled the cedar feeder and hung it with pure joy and excitement. Then- *woooooop* (sound effect in cartoons when a flower suddenly droops because someone stinks or something like that). The stupid stand was too cheap and flimsey, even though the guy at Lowes said it would be "perfect". So in an act of desparation, we simply hung it on one of the fence posts, in manner of a trailer park. As I sulked in my kitchen, I watched a beautiful blue jay fly over to the feeder to take a looksey. I had hope for a minute, but that vanished as I watched the fairly large bird awkwardly try to find a way to perch on the feeder so he could eat. He kind of stood on top of the birdfeeder, cocked his head, bobbed around, and then eventually fly away out of frustration. I bought the cheaper, smaller feeder because I was too cheap to spend $30 on a more practical, larger one with a larger perch. It looks like the Lowe's guy was right about one thing- he told me to go for the larger one. What did I think; that these big birds would just float up to it and hang out mid-air?
This huge dissapointment taught me a lesson. PLAN house projects! Next time I will break into my Martha Stewart Living magazines and take some much needed advice from the domestic genious herself. I was very foolish, and now I get to trek back to Lowes to return that stupid awkward pole. Sadly, the larger birds in my backyard are just going to have to go hungry.
I did have a successful project though. I really like the color of my bathroom. I managed to prep and paint the whole thing in about 4 hours. The entire time I had old episodes of "The Hills" playing on my laptop, so it was just fun little "Amy time". At one point I had to sit on the toilet backwards in order to paint the wall behind it (I know that sounds really weird, but its not- just picture it). Ross walked in the bathroom and got this HUGE loving smile on his face and said, "That is the most adorable thing I had ever seen- I need to take a picture". So I felt cute and figured I had a little bit of paint on my cheek or something. So I held up my brush, looked over my shoulder,smiled big, and posed for a picture. Well it turns out that I actually had a major "plumber" crack going and managed to get blue paint on it as well. So we have a pretty ridiculous picture of me posing for a picture, but looking quite silly. I would post it on here, but I would need to crop it first :) Martha Stewart, I am NOT!