it's just paint!!!

so today . . . i agreed to have the outside of my house painted next week. while i am out of town...

i know what you are thinking. "are you insane?!?!?!" i know, i know. i clearly remember the baby boy blue room. i know that the odds that my house will be painted exactly like i want it when i am not here to make sure it is done right are probably slim. but it is either have it done that week or the week my parents are visiting. and i want to get it DONE! so i choose to trust my painter...

i was hoping to have the painting done a couple of weeks ago, but it took some time to get my colors chosen and approved. living in our city is kind of like living in a gigantic homeowner's association. you can't park your car on the street overnight--even in front of your own house. you have to take your exterior christmas decorations down by january 15th. your library card expires every couple of years and you have to go back in and prove that you still live within the city limits. your garbage cans can't be visible from the street...

...and you have to get a permit to do anything to your house. want to replace your windows with new, energy efficient ones or build a covered patio in your own backyard? you need a permit. want to rip out all your landscaping so you can redo it and make it beautiful? you need a permit (and don't even think about astroturf--i'm pretty sure they will throw you in jail for that!) you even need a permit to replace your dishwasher! in your kitchen!!!

so you can imagine that our lovely city is not going to let you paint your house just any old color. oh no, you have to choose from their palette, have it approved, and... yes, get a permit.

i logged onto the city's website to view their color palette. bland, blah earth tones with some darker colors allowed as accents. i was underwhelmed. i drove around our neighborhood and looked at houses and saw... lots of earth tones. some people clearly did not get city approval for their colors, but others were pretty creative with the limited choices on the website. i was starting to debate the merits of just painting the house whatever i wanted and then feigning ignorance if i got caught. but i hate it when people do that! the whole "ask forgiveness, not permission" thing just irritates me--i think it's arrogant--so i was determined to do the right thing and get my paint permit.

knowing that my computer didn't necessarily represent the city's colors accurately, i headed to home depot (yes, i am still mad at their carpet people, but the paint people have been good to me. so far.) the city's website said to go choose paint colors and then bring them in for approval. ok. i liked the sound of that. maybe there would be a bit of flexibility after all. i knew i wanted the body of the house to be a lovely shade of pale yellow--not too bright, not too light--just a nice, medium yellow. i did not want brown, tan, beige, terra cotta, or white. the style of our house just screams, "i am a bungalow! paint me yellow!!" of course, our house isn't a bungalow. it is a 2,367 square foot two story house. but from the front, it looks like a bungalow. i can't explain it--it is like a freak of nature (or architecture.) i was pretty sure there were some nice yellows in the city's palette, so i thought i was off to a good start...

then i needed trim colors. white, of course. how could the city argue with white. the windows have white trim. the garage door is white. surely they would let me use white. but i needed something else for some contrast. what to choose, what to choose...

i'll admit i was influenced by the ugly red painted brick on our walkway. i had asked jose' what we could do with that, and he said we could paint it. he suggested gray. ok! so all the painted brick would be charcoal gray, and then we could use a lighter gray to accent the trim. but i really, really wanted a purple door. i was pretty sure the city wouldn't let me have it, but just in case, i picked up a purple chip anyway...

i headed for city hall. after a quick stop at the sheriff's office to register our security system (they probably even have my shoe size somewhere in their files...) i went to the city planning desk. i was not the first one there. the guy ahead of me had just moved into the city and wanted to fix the hand railing on his staircase. he wanted to make it safe and bring it up to code. you would think this would be something the city would support. you would be wrong.

i listened to him go around and around with the city planner about that hand railing. because apparently if he was going to replace the hand railing, then he had to bring the whole staircase up to code, which would mean ripping the existing stairs out and rebuilding them. which would mean changing the pitch and width of the stairs. which would mean there wouldn't be room for his staircase in it's current location...

you see where this is going.

he was so frustrated. and i was starting to wonder what would happen to me if i just slowly started moving backwards toward the door. i think he was wishing he had never purchased a house in our lovely city. i was thinking just wait until he gets a parking ticket for parking in front of his own house overnight. i hid the purple paint chip in my pocket.

finally it was my turn. i started filling out my paperwork and when i got to the part where it asked for my paint colors, the city planner pulled out "the book." clearly "close" was not going to be good enough. i was going to have to use their exact colors. so i gave him my yellow. i thought that was safe. "oh," he said, "that looks pretty bright!"

were we looking at the same paint chip?!? i don't think so, because the paint chip i was looking at was barely pigmented! "well," i said, "i looked at the palette online, and there were several yellow tones. some were much darker than this." he looked at me like i had just grown fangs and horns! he flipped his book open and found a divider tab that said, "yellow." score one for me, because i am pretty sure he wouldn't need a divider tab if there was just one acceptable shade of yellow. we found one that was almost exactly the color i had in my hand. he then went to his file box, and pulled out the paint chip of the "approved" yellow that was the closest to mine and handed it to me. "what's this for?" i asked. "that is the paint color for your house. take it to the paint store and they will match it," he replied.

ok, i could see how this was going to work. close was definitely not going to be good enough.

we continued. we finally found paint colors that were acceptable to both of us. it was going so well, that i pulled out the purple paint chip. "and," i said, "i was thinking that this would be really pretty, just on the front door..." he didn't even bat an eye, he just started flipping through his book.

i had seen the palette. i knew purple was not a part of it. pretty soon he pulled out a dark reddish rust color. "how about this?" he asked.

eewww. it was not even close. i laid it down with my other colors, and said, "no, i don't think so. i guess if i can't have purple, i'll just use the gray." what i wanted to say was, "are you kidding me?!?! would you put that color on YOUR house?!?! you probably don't even live here. and if you do, you probably sign all your own paperwork..." but i didn't. it's probably not the smartest move to antagonize someone who holds the power to make you paint your house bland and trim it with boring. "ok then," he said, "all you have to do is finish filling out the paperwork."

oh boy. more paperwork. i continued filling in the blanks. and then i got to the part where it said that i would throw my body in front of a speeding train before i would paint even one small brick or stone on my house. whaaaat? NOW we were going to have a problem. because that horrendously painted red brick was not going to look good with the rest of my colors. which was not even the issue. the issue was that I HATED IT!!! there had to be a solution. i could live without a purple door if i had to, but that brick had to be painted.

at this point i was seriously considering just repainting the house in it's current colors, which would not require a permit. but the trim is pink. i am not really a pink person. it had to be changed.

i confess that i thought about lying and then just doing what i wanted to do anyway. the bureaucracy was killing me!! but i soldiered on. i told him the brick was already painted. i told him how ugly it was. i appealed to his sense of color. i tried to explain how terrible it was going to look with my new paint colors, and how all i really wanted to do was to bring the outside of my house up to the city's high standards. (hey, i can throw it around with the best of them!) finally he said, "it is already painted?" "yes," i said, "it is already painted this awful fake brick red. and it is chipping. badly! and i think the charcoal gray will make it look more natural. like stone." he looked me right in the eye. i looked right back at him, with a combination of pleading and thank you for agreeing with me in my eyes. "ok," he said, "i think i can sign off on that."

yes! success!!

and so now i have city approved paint colors. i have a paint crew scheduled. all that is left to do is to explain to the painters which colors i want painted where, and then go out of town...

i'm pretty sure this is where the trouble really begins...

snug as a bug in a rug :-)

so today . . . my baby is back in the garage! yay!!

no, not diandra! diandra is in oregon helping her best friend get married.

i'm talking about my car.

my car has had a rough few months. it all started at the old house when i noticed the hot water heater was leaking a bit--quite a bit, actually--which meant moving all the (now) wet boxes that i had stacked in front of it to the other side of the garage. where my car was usually parked. which meant that my car had to be moved to the driveway... the cold, dark, wet from the neighbor's sprinkler overspray, driveway...

and then we bought a house, which meant i had to start packing boxes. but the boxes had to be put somewhere, and the house was starting to look like ground zero, so some of the packed boxes joined the previously wet boxes in the other side of the garage... where my car was usually parked. which meant my car had to huddle in the driveway for a little longer...

and then we moved to the new house where we no longer had a three car garage. now we had a cozy two car garage. but here's the thing about two car garages--they are designed to hold two cars. just two. and when you have two cars that you would like to keep in the garage, that doesn't leave a lot of room for washers and dryers. or workbenches and tools. or golf clubs and bowling balls. or a shop vac and a bowflex. and so my car was still camped out on the driveway...

but the lack of space in the new garage was only part of the problem. the other part of the problem was that we didn't get any remotes for the garage door opener. our new garage has a really nice garage door opener, and it works just great... IF you stand in the doorway to the house and press the button. it is quiet. it is fast. it has a laser safety feature. but no remotes. and so the only way to open and close the garage door is by pressing the switch next to the door into the house and then running out of the garage as fast as you can. which is complicated by the laser beam safety. because when you break that laser beam, the door stops. so to get out of the garage, you have to hit the button by the door, run really fast toward the driveway, leap OVER the laser beam (which, btw, you can't see,) and hope you don't smack your head on the descending garage door.

and of course you can't do any of that from inside the car.

so until the problem of the remotes could be fixed, my car still sat in the driveway...

our realtor, jill, assured us that she could take care of this remote problem. we were not going to get any remotes from the sellers. they were not the most cooperative people we have ever encountered. but rollie climbed up on a ladder, wrote down all the necessary numbers from the unit, and jill ordered new remotes from amazon...

problem solved.

maybe in the real world, but in julieland, the problem was NOT solved. the garage door openers from amazon wouldn't work. rollie tried everything! so jill called a garage door opener guy, and he came out, and HE tried everything, and it still wouldn't work.

and my car was still sitting in the driveway, collecting dust and water marks from our sprinkler overspray. i was seriously starting to worry about the paint. watermarks on black shiny paint are not good... not good at all!

and then, while we were on vacation a couple of weeks ago, jill had the garage door opener guy come back, and he connected some sort of device to the garage door opener so that it would work with a new set of remotes.

yay! my car was pretty excited. so was rollie. so was i...

... until we got back from vacation, and i opened the garage door only to remember that i had put a bunch of boxes in the garage in order to get the last of the stuff out of the old house. so now even though i had garage door openers that worked, i still couldn't get my car into the garage...

sigh.

i immediately started trying to unpack those boxes to clear out that space. but i kept getting sidetracked. like yesterday. yesterday, i rearranged the kitchen cabinets. yes i said rearranged! i unpacked the kitchen a month ago, but i found a few more kitchen things in the boxes in the garage yesterday. and when i brought them in to find a place for them, i found that there wasn't a place for them. so i rearranged things. in the kitchen. which used up time i could have spent unpacking more boxes...

you see, this is why it is taking me so long to unpack! i want everything to be in the perfect place. but i don't always immediately know where the perfect place is. so even after i have unpacked, i am still moving things around...

but a few days ago, i was alarmed by how terrible my car was looking. i was suddenly worried that maybe the paint was going to be ruined, if i didn't get it in the garage pretty soon. so i stayed up until 3:00 a.m. last night working in the garage. and finally, i had cleared enough space to get my car into the garage!

oh it still isn't perfect. there are a bunch of boxes that are diandra's which need to be moved to her storage unit. there are some boxes that need to go to my school. and rollie hasn't had a chance to put up the shelving yet that is going to hold the bowling balls and golf clubs. so one side of my car is still crowded. but the important thing is that when the sprinklers go off at 5:00 a.m. the water is not going to be hitting my nice, clean, shiny car...

because now my car is nice and shiny and clean. rollie took it to the car wash today. and those water spots? they wouldn't come off. it was pretty bad. but those car wash guys have some tricks up their sleeves, and they somehow used some clay to remove the water deposits from my paint. and now my car is very shiny, and happy, sitting in our new garage.which is where it is going to stay! because that car wash magic? i'm sure it is cheaper than a new paint job, but maybe not by much...

the perfect carry-on bag? only time will tell...

so today . . . i bought my first backpack.

well, technically rollie bought it, but i picked it out. well, TECHNICALLY, i am the one who handed over the visa, but rollie will be paying the bill...

ok. the truth is, rollie drove me to the outlet mall, and then sat in the car figuring out how to use the sirius radio while i chose a gift for myself. because yesterday was our anniversary, and anniversaries mean gifts...

at least, they mean gifts if you are me. sadly for rollie, we got married at the end of august, and since i don't get paid during the summer, by the end of august my purchasing power is pretty much maxed out at 7-11. rollie, on the other hand, saves most of his expendable cash, so i am always the lucky recipient of something wonderful. yes, life just isn't fair :-)

so this morning off we went to the outlet mall.

i could spend all day at the outlet mall, but i didn't want to do that today. we don't have a doggie door installed yet, so our pups were going to be "imprisoned" in the house while we were gone, and i didn't really want to test their limits! this meant i needed a plan, a goal, a purpose. i didn't have time to scour the racks in all my favorite stores looking for the best deals--today, i needed to shop like a man! today i needed tunnel vision! today i needed to decide what i was going to buy, find it, pay for it, and take it home.

when we recently flew to new york, it became clear that i needed a new carry-on bag. i almost killed myself more than once, schlepping my suitcase, carry-on, and handbag through airports, onto shuttles, and into motels--especially since two of my toes were broken! (and before you say why wasn't rollie handling my bags, he helped me as much as he could, but his hands were full too! i wish i had video of trying to go up the escalator ahead of rollie, tipping all my bags over, and nearly taking him out! i'm lucky he stayed within ten feet of me after that!!)

my current carry-on bag is the result of lots of research and thought--of course. until the last few years, i rarely flew. but when it looked like diandra and i would maybe be making a trip to portland every summer, i quickly decided i needed a better carry-on bag. because i didn't own a handbag big enough for everything i wanted to take on the plane with me.

needless to say, i don't travel light...

i need a lot on an airplane. it doesn't matter if i am flying for two hours or twenty hours, i take a lot of stuff with me. first of all, there are just some things that i don't trust in my checked baggage. you hear stories about valuables disappearing out of people's luggage all the time... cameras, computers, jewelry. and so when i travel, if my bags are going to be out of my sight, i feel compelled to carry my "valuables" with me.

and that includes the cords to all my electronics. yes, that's right, i don't even put the cords to my electronics in my checked bags. my luggage does not end up at the same place as i do an inordinately high percentage of the time. i'm pretty sure i can live for 24 hours without clean clothes or a comb, but if my electronics go dead and i can't recharge them? let's just say, it won't be pretty...

(rollie does not get this at all. he travels with a tiny little bag that pretty much holds his ipad, a set of earbuds, and maybe a few snacks.)

in addition to my "valuables," i also have to take hard candy (if i don't vigorously suck on hard candy when we start our descent, i am pretty sure my eardrums will explode,) magazines (because they won't let you turn on your electronics while the plane is taking off and landing. which, btw is totally ridiculous! one time when we flew, i thought my phone was off, but it wasn't, and everything proceeded according to schedule--the airplane's instruments did NOT go crazy!!) snacks (that tiny pack of snack mix is just not enough. if you are sitting next to me on an airplane, you might not want to go to sleep until you have your snack in your hand. otherwise, your snack might end up in my hand. and then my mouth,) and my inflatable travel pillow.

oh, and my polar fleece blanket--even in the summer.

i don't travel anywhere without my polar fleece blanket. but when i fly, my blanket serves two purposes, the obvious one being to keep me from freezing when they crank up the a/c on the plane. the not so obvious purpose is to hide my handbag from the flight attendants. for some reason, the last few times i have flown, they say EVERYTHING has to be stowed either in the overhead bins or under the seat in front of you. but there is never enough room for my carry-on bag AND my handbag under that seat! but if i put my bag in the overhead bin, then i can't get to my snacks and magazines and electronics and inflatable travel pillow. so my solution is to put the carry-on under the seat in front of me, and then hide my handbag behind my back or in my lap and cover up with my blanket. then when the flight attendants walk through the cabin, checking for take-off infractions, they just think i am cold and they move on... so far, rollie hasn't turned me in, but i fear that one day he is going to feel compelled, for the safety of the rest of the passengers, to point out my deception to the flight attendants. of course, that will be the last time we ever fly together...

which is just another reason that i need a better carry-on.

i really thought that if i could find a carry-on with wheels, my problems would be solved! so a few years ago i went to the orange county swap meet with my list of requirements--wheels, cheap, big enough to hold all my necessities, yet small enough to fit under an airplane seat, and cute. because if i have to carry something around with me all day, it had better be cute! so i was ecstatic when i found this bag!it was perfect! i bought it and prepared to fly to portland...

but as it turned out, it was not the perfect bag. the wheels were better than having to carry it, but i had trouble maneuvering it and my larger bag. i could get a lot in it, but it fit so tightly under the seat that i couldn't get anything out of it. and yet i kept telling myself, through gritted teeth, that it was perfect.

and then a couple of weeks ago, we traveled to new york.

i couldn't balance my bags. they kept tipping over. they would get stuck every time i had to roll them over a gap to get onto an elevator or a tram. and then they fell down the escalator, smacking into rollie, almost taking me with them, and holding up everyone behind us.

it was not my finest moment.

it was suddenly clear to me that i needed a different type of carry-on bag. and i needed it before i took another trip. which is happening in about a week!

so i did what i always do when i need to buy something--i got on the internet. i searched. i googled. my requirements had changed a bit (i decided instead of wheels, i needed a really good cross-body bag or backpack,) but i still couldn't find anything! i haunted discount stores (because it's the end of august and my bank account is dwindling!!) with no success. and our next trip was getting closer and closer. so when rollie said, "let's go shopping for your anniversary present. what do you want to look for?" i immediately thought about a new carry-on bag.

rollie has a backpack. it's a nice medium-sized black leather backpack. it is very nice, but i really didn't want a backpack. rollie really wanted me to get a backpack. he thought it would be the easiest way for my to carry my stuff and still be able to drive my larger suitcase. but i didn't want a backpack. i wasn't going to get a backpack. all the backpacks i saw either looked like they should be carried by a 12 year old girl or a man. or the fabric was awful! so even though i considered backpacks, i ended up rejecting them all...

instead i looked at tote bags. i looked at large handbags. i looked at messenger bags. i looked at cross-body bags. i even looked at laptop bags. but none of them were perfect. they were too big to fit under the seat, or too small to hold all my stuff, or there was no outside pocket for my phone, or the fabric was too floppy to hold it's shape. or they were just too ugly!

i finally bought a backpack.

the one i decided on is pretty cute. the fabric is a nice heavier weight. the size seems just right (i think.) i didn't have to pay for it, because it was my anniversary gift. i think carrying it on my back will make it easier for me to get my larger bag where it needs to go without knocking anyone down or hurting anyone who might be behind me on an escalator. i think it is going to be the perfect travel bag......if all my stuff will fit into it...

Hello. Remember me? I've been packing and moving and not blogging. And now I'm going on vacation for 10 days. But when I come back, I'll blog. I pro