at least I think that's how it goes.

it's cold and I'm tired. I haven't painted the last two nights and today is Friday but not my Friday because I have to work Saturday for the next two weeks. Our work weeks start on Saturday. I'm not sure why this is. I've worked for places that start on Monday and Sunday but not Saturday. Anyway, ours starts on Saturday. Usually what this means is I have the first two days of the work week off, Saturday and Sunday. Everyone has Sunday off because we are closed. Some people have to work on Saturdays so for each schedule (which is about 2 months), everyone gets at least 3 Saturdays on. Those weeks that they work the Saturday, they get a weekday as their day off. So technically I am working the next three Saturdays but I'm on vacation for one of them. My weekday off is Wednesday. So this work week, which began on Saturday, was normal, I was off Saturday and Sunday and I worked M-F. This upcoming work week, which starts tomorrow, I am working Saturday, off Sunday, working M and T, off Wednesday, working Th and F, then the new work week begins and I am working Saturday off Sunday again, same thing, off Wednesday. Now do you see how I ended up working 6 days in a row? It's really not 6 days out of the work week, it's just a kind of dumb thing that happens the first week your Saturday rotation begins. The worst part about Saturday is that I start at 745, instead of 930. I finish at 445, instead of 6, but still, that's damn early to be getting up on a Saturday.

I think seeing my house all in a mess makes me really tired. Like I come home and I'm intending to paint because I really want to get it done, not only so we can further progress on our scheme but because my sister and her baby are arriving here on Monday, as is Jen and then everyone else will be here by the following Monday. Then I'll be super busy and I won't have any time to do anything. So this weekend will definitely be a painting push. Hopefully I'll be able to drag myself home tonight and at least finish the trim in the room I am currently working in and finish that room up. I hate that room, there's just so much freaking trim. After this room I have to do the kitchen, which I'm also dreading because while it is small, it has the same problem as the current room, three colors and tons of trim. I hate trim. I painted the rooms in order of difficulty, hardest to easiest. I figure that was a good strategy for homework so it should work good for other things as well. I guess the idea is that you conquer the things you're dreading the most first that way they're taken care of and it's easy sailing from there. My whole thing with that was the easy homework could be finished in between classes in case I fell asleep while trying to do the hard homework.

Well anyway, I did the living room first because it has freaking 12 feet high ceilings. It was only two colors and while it had trim, it wasn't excessive. The problem with that room was the ceiling being so high. I didn't have to paint that ceiling but I did have to paint the trim which lined the ceiling and we only have a 6 foot ladder which is old and rickety. Further, Sam, the P cat, thinks he is in love with the ladder. From the time I brought it into the house until I took it out, he kept climbing all over it rubbing his face on it. That would have been ok and even cute. However, it didn't stop there. He started getting jealous and possessive. He was getting mad at me because I was on his ladder. He started trying to knock me off balance by leaping onto the ladder from far away places. When that didn't work he ran up and hit me, scratching me. Scratching is something that happens with cats, as is biting, but Sam is not an aggressive cat, at least not towards humans. Everyone was very shocked that he would attack me but I guess that's just how much he loved that ladder. So back to the living room, it's painted and done but I got some trim paint on the ceiling. I'd like to note here that I painted all day and all night and some of the next day to get it all done before my grandparents' arrival. My brother and I were moving the furniture back into place as they were pulling up in the driveway.

After the living room, I did my mom's bathroom. This wasn't the next most difficult room, however it was pretty hard for being a small room with only two colors. The thing about the bathroom was it needed to be primed and I wanted to put clouds on the ceiling. The bathroom took a week to complete but it is so far my favorite room because of the clouds. I don't scrapebook, but I'm seriously considering taking it up to make a memoir of my painting escapades in this house. Maybe I'll throw in the outside paint job and miscellaneous other renovations such as the new kitchen counters and sink and the new (smaller) toilets.

So my paragraph about the sunroom/office got erased because it was too long or something. I really hate unix. I was just saying something about how we removed a fake wall and found an ugly wall under it with a huge rat hole with a huge dead rat in it. It was pretty much mummified but it stank to high hell and no one wanted to remove it and we thought if we tried it would break apart and get all nasty anyway. So we pulled a Cask of Amontillado and plastered that sucker up.

After that bad wall I decided to just leave the fake walls up with their ugly wall paper and paint over it. So I'm almost done with the trim then I'll have to move the furniture back and finish the ceiling. There's these book shelves that are an inch lower than the ceiling so there's white spaces above them where I couldn't fit the paint roller. I painted the cieling in the office but not the walls and trim. That's a pretty small room though so it should only take a day, however I do have to patch, as my mom was so kind to point out. I guess I'll do that tonight and let it dry overnight then go in to paint after work on Saturday. The problem with patching, aside from all the stupid work that goes into it, is my mom expects me to do it to the same standard that she would. This means she basically wants a patch duplicate of the original piece. Well, that's not going to happen. Patching is for nail holes and oops chunks, it's not for rebuilding hollow boards which were termite meals long ago. If it's that bad, it should be replaced. But whatever, I'll patch it so that I have a surface to paint on but I'm not going to spend two days trying to get a perfect patch going on.

Following that room I have the kitchen and the bedroom left. I'm saving the bedroom for last because I think it will be the easiest room. It's pretty small, only two colors, square, and there's not too much furniture in there to move, although the dresser will be a bitch. Further, that's the room that looks the best in its current state and doesn't really need to be painted except that it's white and only asylums should be painted white.

That leaves the kitchen as the most difficult. Slanted ceilings, years of paint layers, full priming, trim, angles, walls, windows, appliances, cats everywhere. It's going to suck. I got it about 1/4 primed already but I am not looking forward to that room. After the upstairs in complete, there's a bathroom down here and a living room to be painted. They were painted a few years ago, unfortunately some brilliant person thought it'd be a great idea to paint everything the same color. That is the trim and the walls. This would be ok, a little boring, but ok, in a basic room with minimal trim. However, the stupid fucking moron sick fuck who made this house decided it would be cool to put all kinds of crazy trim everywhere, which results in moulding that begs to be noticed. Further, the living room is yellow and I hate the color yellow. The living room shouldn't be too hard except that it is big and there's a lot of stuff in it. I'm planning to pack a lot of it up for storage though so that may help.

I'm not even worried about the bathroom, that'll take half a day, it's about as big as my thumb. There's so much to do, never enough time, and I'm still tired even though I've been up for more than an hour. Not looking forward to work, it's just sooo boring! Not having coffee really sucks because, let me tell you, diet pepsi just doesn't cut it. Every call I get it's either, "My phone doesn't work, does this mean I don't have to pay my bill today?" or "I'm looking at my bill...," which means, "I used way over my minutes but I don't want to pay it I think you should credit me otherwise your service sucks and I'm going to cancel and go to Competition because they're a way better company and if I go over my minutes they won't charge me, which I know makes absolutely no sense and is a total lie but I still want you to credit me." Of course that makes no sense so why would I credit them? Then I get yelled at because my company is holding them hostage (contract). I tell them they are free to go at anytime then they say they are not because of the early termination fee. Freedom has a price sir, which you probably do not realize because you're busy sitting on your ass yelling at me over the phone because you're stupid while some other guys are busy paying the price for your freedom to do dumb things like sit on your ass and yell at me.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to my vacation which is sad because I haven't even been there a year and haven't even accrued my full vacation time so technically I shouldn't even be taking one yet. Oh well, I don't plan on being there for a full year so I guess that's ok.

There's a winter storm coming in today. "Winter" storm. Don't we need winter to qualify for a winter storm? They should just call it Mono-season Storm. I hate the weather here, I hate the people here, I hate the slow ass drivers who get in my way and don't understand that the left hand lane is not a travel lane but a passing lane. Who don't understand that if someone comes up behind you and they are driving faster than you that you are supposed to move to your right to let them pass. Who don't understand that unless your car has flashing blue lights on top that you are not authorized to enforce the speed limit. I hate the stupid people who don't know how to drive their own cars and get into stupid shows of the manliness or bitchiness and think that driving like an out of control maniac at high speeds when you can't control your vehicle is a good thing to do. Idiots who cause traffic jams by flipping their cars over on the H1, idiots who then complain that speeding is the problem and as a result there are cops all over the freaking place tagging people are just driving to work, who happen to drive a little fast because everyone else drives so slow and because if they drove the speed limit it'd add at least 15 minutes to their commute. I think it's stupid that I've been driving for over 10 years and speeding all that time and have never even come close to getting into an accident (that was my fault) because I am aware of my personal and vehicular limitations. The only accidents I've been in were all at speeds of under 25 MPH. I'm not out there racing, I'm just going to work to pay my taxes to pay the clean up crews who shut down freeways and scrape stupid bodies off of it.

Anyway, I gotta go get ready to go to work since I have to drive the freaking speed limit which is way too freaking low. I'm still tired and I have a headache. I had a dream about Will last night and I don't really remember the details but I have a feeling it was at least slightly disturbing.