Corybantic

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Word of the day – corybantic – frenzied; agitated; unrestrained.

My littlest grandson Corey has his agitated unrestrained moments, but underneath that he’s considerate and very loving.  A funny mix.

But the Y in this word is pronounced “uh”, not “ee”, and corybantic rhymes with “romantic”.  So don’t say you didn’t learn anything today.  Or that you wouldn’t love Corey if you met him.

My corybantic days of this long redecorating summer are drawing to an end.  The main floor is done except for a couple of light fixtures and some serious dusting.  There have been times when I would flop myself down, utterly exhausted, wondering why my shoulders ached, then think well you just moved sixteen pieces of furniture, you idiot.  I’m not always polite when I talk to myself.

The wall colour in bedroom one is called Swiss coffee.  It is not yellow, even though that’s how it appears in the photo.  More of a creamy white.  Bedroom two paint colour is called plantation tan and also not as lovely in the photo as in real life.  Since we are not familiar with plantations or what the sun on one might do to ones skin colour, we decided to rename this colour maple walnut ice cream, more in keeping with my edible colour theme.  Not sure if you would want to eat a pelican, but pelican is the name of bedroom three and the ensuite bath colour.  Nothing hung on the walls yet of the bedroom three/art area space because I can’t decide what “splash of colour” goes with pelican and cream.  Maybe blueberry?  Or raspberry?  Or some other fruit?

And that’s it!  No more painting of ceilings and walls!  I even cleaned out and reorganized my junk drawer, sorting things like screws into pointy and non-pointy ends, because nails and not nails wasn’t sufficiently specific.  So now what am I supposed to do with myself??

Happily I remembered I have a blog.  And a brand new art area chock full of misplaced and mixed up supplies, and a project, to do a couple of coffee pictures for my daughter.  And I have cupboard shelves that need cleaning and maybe painting and definitely new lining.  And things that need moving downstairs from up, and upstairs from down  and speaking of stairs, the carpet on them is awful.  And then there’s the basement, but that’s a project for another day.  Or series of months.  And the main bathroom needs renovating, which should have been done first, but too late for that.

So.  It appears I am not really done.  But it does feel like a chapter has ended.  Corybantic no more.  Until the next wave of redecorating mania hits me and sweeps me away I guess.

 

Sharing My World 59

Share Your World – 2016 Week 34

What is your favorite comfort snack food?

Chips.  I will even snack on the ones I don’t like (ketchup, barbecue, salt and vinegar, anything extra spicy) simply for the salty taste.  Well, it’s not sugar, is it?  But still bad for you.  I don’t know why I crave salt.  And I wish I could truthfully say fruit and raw vegetables are my favourite, because they’re great and I love them, just not the way I love sour cream and onion or all dressed or nacho chips.  It’s kind of like being drawn to the Fonz in high school when you know Richie would be the smarter choice.

Is the paper money in your possession right now organized sequentially according to denomination and with the bills right side up and facing the same way?

I had a five dollar bill and a handful of change in my purse but I gave it to my daughter the other day because she had a flat tire in my driveway and had to call AMA to get it changed and then the spare tire needed air and apparently you need change for those air machines.  The AMA guy was nice enough to follow her to the nearest gas station and help her out with that too so that she could drive home.

So the answer to the question is – there is no paper money in my possession right now.  There very rarely is because I use bank cards for everything.  But if there was, YES, it would be that anally organized.  Anyone who has ever worked with cash knows that’s what you have to do with it if you want to sleep at night.

If you were a mouse in your house in the evening, what would you see your family doing?

Snacking on chips.  That would be just me since I’m the only one here at the moment and no one is around to give me disapproving looks about my snack choices.  I need to stop buying those stupid things.  Also if I’m not moving furniture and various messes around I am doing important stuff on my iPad.

Would you rather not be able to read or not be able to speak?

I can go for days without speaking, except for the occasional expletive when some redecorating procedure goes wrong.  Then when I do talk on the phone or in person my voice sounds all weird and hoarse until I get it going again.  So as long as there’s texting and emails I guess it would be no great loss for me to give up speaking.  I do say some pretty stupid boring things.  But give up reading?  I hope that never happens.

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Another room is finished!  But just when it looks like the redecorating phase of my summer is nearing completion,  (two bedrooms to go), I decide to rip up the master bedroom carpet.  I hope this helps to explain my latest absence.  I also got the last stipple ceiling scraped off and chucked out.   And I moved three bookcases and a gazillion books into the space that is now no longer my art room.  Because the art room is moving to a new space in the master bedroom now that there’s so much space in there with the books gone and a smaller dresser and no dust collecting monster headboard.  But this latest rearrangement has to wait until the room is all painted and the floor is tiled.  Or something is done to the floor.  At the moment the bare sub floor is looking better than the carpet ever did.

So that’s my jumbled up upside down world to date.  I need some chips.

Take It Away

After the back entranceway transformation with all the baskets, the kitchen was up next for an update. The worn floor should be replaced, but frankly, I don’t care.  We replaced it once already years ago.  And the cupboards are old and kind of horrible on the inside, but here’s what I figure. Someone will buy this place and rip out the cupboards and the floor and be all pleased with themselves when it’s done.  So I won’t deprive the future owners of that pleasure and expense.  I just wanted the blue and sand and beachy theme gone and the ceiling white again with no stains and no gawd awful fluorescent light buzzing over my head.  Here’s how the cupboards looked before, going up to the ceiling.
And here’s how they look like they don’t do that anymore.
That bit of white at the top really brightened things up.  There is a different mess on the counter in the second picture and the window frame is also now white.

I thought the backsplash tiles were white but here they are going from half-assed white to blinding white.

The colour we decided on for the walls is called melted marshmallow. It’s sort of peachy.  So yeah, I have gone from beachy to peachy.  This colour is now on the kitchen and living room walls and will soon be down the hallway because I just taped six doorways and all the baseboards there. I never counted how many doors there are in the hallway before but that’s a lot of doors.  They were all wood and now they are all white.  The hallway is no longer gloomy.  This is the linen closet door where I started.  Because I like to start at the end and work my way to the beginning.

But back to the kitchen.

Because the walls were blue at the bottom and sandy yellow at the top they begged for this type of work in progress art by my creative daughter.  I’m kind of sorry we painted over it.  And even though the paint included primer, the line where the blue stopped was hell to get rid of.  So there are at least three coats of paint here, and this corner in particular where there is less light is a lovely warm almost orange.  Other places the colour looks much more pale.  So even though this colour is all over the place, it looks like different shades in different lights.

There is a story behind the newly spray painted spoon and fork which I’m sure I have shared elsewhere.  This wall looked a little off balance to me before I added that plate on the left. Then all I could think of was hey diddle diddle the dish ran away with the spoon.  But look at that other wall with just ONE thing hanging there!  I’ve come a long way, baby.

This last one is in the living room by the front door where the colour is beautifully soft.

The best decluttering idea ever, which I’m so happy my daughter shared with me, is to remove absolutely every bit of decor that’s movable from every room in the house.  Then once a room is all fresh and clean and painted, carefully choose only things you love dearly and would be sad about if they were gone to add the finishing touches. Less is more.  And move all that weird shit you bought on impulse out to the garage.

Okay, wake up!  I’m done for now.  I will share my living room/art room journey next.

Or I might tell you about my dermatologist appointment because that’s where I’m headed this afternoon.  The excitement rarely ends around here.

Sharing My World 58

One of those Facebook shares for which the source eludes me.

SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2016 WEEK 15

Name one thing not many people know about you.

I am an open book once you get me talking.  I will spill everything and tell you many things, some of which couldn’t possibly interest you and I don’t even care.  It happened at my CT scan last week when the nurse asked me one innocent little question and I proceeded to blather away for ten minutes as her eyes glazed over.  Then I just decided to shut up.  It was probably nerves.  But here’s the thing you would never guess.  I hate talking to strangers.    So I have no idea what makes me feel like I have to do it.

Maybe I was conditioned from working so long as an optician in a retail setting where it was a job requirement to interact with patients and customers.  I always had to push myself to initiate a conversation.  And then I’d learn all kinds of weird things once we got started. People confide in this face.

I also hate being asked when I’m shopping if I need any help.  Yes of course I need help, but not necessarily the kind I’m being offered unless the employee is a psychiatric therapist working part-time in a shoe store and can give me some life skill tips.

See what I mean?  I just say shit and wonder why later.

If a distant uncle dies and you were always his favorite and he leaves you $50,000 (any currency) in his will, what would you do?

First I would wonder why I was always his favourite.  Because for sure I never called him or remembered his birthday.  I would gratefully accept the cash and put it in the bank.  From there it would slowly dwindle away and disappear.  Then I would wonder where the hell it all went.

Where do you hide junk when people come over?

In cupboards and drawers and closets or just stacked neatly in plain sight.  If I get too creative about squirreling it away it may never surface again.  This house is not that big so it’s incredible how many things go missing in a day.  But random things also show up.  Like the iSkin film for my iPad to keep the screen from getting all wrecked.  It turned up yesterday from under a pile of papers, but it might as well have stayed missing because I made such a mess putting it on that I peeled it off again and threw it out.  Gawd, my life is just one traumatic episode after another.

Complete this sentence: I want to learn more about …

…..historic castles in Britain.  I did not know I wanted to learn more about them until a couple of days ago when I started watching “Secrets of Great British Castles” on Netflix.  The Tower of London was once a sort of zoo housing exotic animals royalty received as gifts.  Why did nobody ever tell me this before?  I’m surprised it’s never come up in the check out line up at the grocery store.

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

W has come home from the east to wait for the river ice to break up at the island and then he will head back for spring fishing and whatever he messes about doing for the rest of the summer.  While he is home I have put him to work on the lawn.  Because what are husbands good for if not rigorous yard work.

I have sanded and painted the stair railings, working outside in the sunshine, inhaling sawdust and paint fumes.  It will be interesting to see if I can put them back where they came from right side up and all.  There is still some prep work left to do on the walls and trim in the back entrance and then the second coat of white goes on the ceiling and the trim.  The rest will be a beautiful shade called coconut milk which will compliment the wood panels part way up two walls.  It’s the greatest stuff for a hallway because it absorbs boot and shoe and handprint marks.  If it was all paint I probably wouldn’t let anyone come in via the back door ever again.  Sort of like how I don’t want anyone to touch the taps or turn on the water after the sink is all sparkly clean.

Every day I add something to the garage sale pile.  W firmly believes the garage sale is imaginary and will never happen.  Oh he of little faith, who may be right, but the stuff is going somewhere, someday.

Next week I’m looking forward to carrying on carrying on.  And maybe naming those galaxies in my coffee.

Keys

I have one set of keys. Car, remote car starter, house and mailbox on two key chains hooked together.  That’s it. I like to hang them up at the door so I will remember to never leave home without them.

All the rest of the keys and other hanging things belong to W. Except for my spare set of car keys, but he uses them and I never do, so they don’t count as being mine.

This is what our mess of keys looked like before I got all ambitious this weekend and made new key holders.

The bottom board is something I put together years ago when I first started painting. It is made from a drawer front, weighs a ton, and was hung up on one center nail. If you didn’t hang your keys just right it went off-balance and either hung crookedly or fell off the wall. Once it went down the basement steps. Funny how you put up with annoying things for a ridiculously long time and then one day just decide to do something about them.

My daughter has offered to paint our house interior, and although I was contemplating updating the guest room/library first, now I think we should start with the back door entrance.  Taking these three junky things off the wall was a start.  Putting up NEW junky things will probably get me in trouble.

W thinks it’s funny that there are so many hooks.  So I asked him to identify all the important hanging things we’ve been looking at every day for a dog’s age if not longer.  We have handcuff keys!  No handcuffs anywhere, but we are prepared if they suddenly turn up.  He used to be a wildlife enforcement officer, in case you’re thinking the handcuff thing might have a slightly more kinky explanation.  There are several key chains with no keys on them, keys we believe might be for one of the filing cabinets, some which could be for padlocks, and several about which we do not have a flying clue.

One of these key holders will go in our garage sale, probably with miscellaneous mystery keys included. I only did the second one because the first one didn’t have room for everything.  Keys are like plastic containers with no lids, or lids that don’t fit on anything.  The day after you throw them out you discover you need them for something.

So they get to hang there for a while and I will tackle another junk corner somewhere else. In other exciting news, our dishwasher door has a broken spring and falls like a lead weight if we let it go, so we went searching for the appliance book to see if parts are still available for it and threw out a dozen booklets for things we no longer have.  The dishwasher is 18 years old!  Today is my son’s birthday and he is 40!  Reverse those two statements in order of importance.

My point is, what is the point?  Okay, I admit I don’t really have a point today.  Except maybe to advise you to take stock of all your keys.  Make the mystery ones into a decorative wall hanging.  Give your grown children something to roll their eyes at.  Then if anyone wants to know how you spent your weekend you can make them sorry they asked.

Art du Jour 60

For the big six-O I am calling this Adventures in Watercolour.  Whether I will ever revisit this place is up in the air for now. This is what I accomplished by paying attention to a little watercolour tutorial and using the wet on wet technique. Up to a point, of course and then did too many embellishments, but over all I think it’s not bad. The crooked border was an impulsive afterthought. And this one I’m happy with simply because it is recognizable as an elephant. So, Happy Middle of the Week Wednesday! I’m drinking that midnight eclipse coffee again and planning on getting many, many things done. Just have to decide what. Perhaps some pseudo LSD hallucination-like wet on wet abstract watercolour blended creations. Whoa. Brace yourself.

In a Different Light

It’s the same picture from yesterday, but this time with indoor light from the left instead of bright daylight from the right.

It makes a big difference! Maybe I’ll keep posting this same piece in different places for the rest of the week….in moonlight, fluorescent light, candlelight…..  No, don’t worry, I’m done.

Except to add that the candle colour matches the bathtub et.al.

There is a reason why you should look at paint samples on every wall of a room as well as at different times of the day and night before finally deciding on a colour.  As if I’ve ever done that.  But it sounds like a good idea, right?  Right.

Also, don’t paint in the dark.  What would you do without me?  I meant in dim light.  Because it will look surprisingly different in the morning.

 

 

Art du Jour 42

This is what happens when you change your mind sixteen times before, during, and after breakfast.  And a few more times after lunch.  Glad I don’t have to peel the layers off this one.  I watched a lot of YouTube mixed media instructional videos yesterday and apparently decided to try all of them out at once.

Hope you’re having a great Saturday!  And that this didn’t give you a migraine!  Next up – aiming for a focal point.

The Artists Are Here

The studio has been taken over and the gallery is filling up fast.

Happy Valentines Day!

Art du Jour 36

Finally got out my acrylic paints and a small canvas and messed around with a colourful sky.

Too bad I kind of suck at realistic trees, but the picture was crying out for trees. So there are trees.

Add splatter and snow splotches and voilà. Look how the color changes with the fading light.

Happy February Everybody!  We survived another January!  WooHoo!