just be.

ermahgerd blerg perst!

Actual stuff to talk about! Tonight featuring correct capitalization! (WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?)

I recently started reading The Eight-Step Home Cure. I've been trying to get a handle on the clutter (an ongoing struggle for me) and disorganization (same) but also my unhealthy habits with money. I'm working with some pros on all this, but this book is helping me too. 

Last week was week one and had a mix of mental and physical tasks:

• Make a complete list of repairs and solutions. Repairs needed all over the house, the kinds of things that one might note when renting a new apartment. And solutions for each of those. I got through the list of repairs but am still working on filling in the solutions.
• Vacuum the floors. DONE. We have someone who comes and cleans the house each week, and she had just vacuumed and mopped most of the floors, but I kept in the spirit of the task (which is to become more intimately familiar with the house and its flow) by using a Swiffer throughout the rooms.
• Mop the floors. DONE. Well, Melanie (the cleaning person) did the mopping, but I kept in the spirit of the task with the sweeping.
• Remove one item from the house and put it outside. DONE. The main goal with this task is to break the seal on getting rid of stuff if you have a hard time with that. Another goal is to signal to the world that you are freeing your home of stuff. Or something like that. Anyway, I had a mannequin that had been just leaning against a wall for years, ever since I bought it at an estate sale in Squirrel Hill. So out she went, and someone took her the next day.
• Buy fresh flowers. DONE Wednesday. This is the easiest one, and that's good because it's supposed to go on every week. I pick up groceries at Whole Foods each week, and there are always tons of beautiful fresh flowers near the customer-service desk where I pick them up and pay for them. This week, I chose some gorgeous ranunculus. Vibrantly pink, which is unlike me, but ranunculus always suck me in. Just gorgeous. I cut the stems and put them in water in a mason jar, and I've thinned out the stems and foliage once. I also printed out instructions for a simple solution for water for longer-lasting flowers. This one has me excited, if you can't tell.
• Sit for ten minutes in a part of your home in which you never sit. Weirdly, this was the one that I took the longest to get to. Today I worked in the dining room all day (more on that in a moment), so that was way more than ten minutes.
• Look into earth-friendly cleaning products. DONE. Mostly. I stocked up at Whole Foods Wednesday, but I might have forgotten some category or other. I bought basically the whole Method line of cleaning products. 

So this is week two of the cure, in which I focus on the kitchen. This week's tasks?

• Clear space for an outbox (a space in the home where I can stow things I'm thinking of getting rid of). DONE today.
• Clear one surface and use the outbox. DONE today. Cleared many surfaces, actually, all over the kitchen. Check out this kitchen island!  (the stuff on it is just tonight's dinner and the recipe, plus the flowers from last week and the cutting boards, which have no other home, at least yet.)
• Clean your kitchen from top to bottom, and throw away old food. Buy a water filter and use it. IN PROGRESS. I went through all the exposed surfaces (a couple of bookshelves and the kitchen island and countertops) and the upper cabinets to find anything that I could discard.
  
  
  I put a bunch of stuff in the outbox
  
  and started a Google Sheets list of most of it and shared it with local friends to see whether anyone wanted anything. My main goal is to get rid of the stuff, so I'm keeping that really simple. Not chasing down new homes for anything, just setting aside stuff if someone wants it. And it feels good to see some of this help someone out. As for the water filter, Mr. Bee researched this a year or so ago and determined that a reverse-osmosis filter is really the only kind that would be worth having, for us at least, and is actually really wasteful of water. So we're sticking with unfiltered tap water for everything except drinking, and he buys cases of bottled water at Costco for drinking.
• Fix one thing in your house yourself. I'm not positive what this will be. If assembling something counts (I have lots of those on the list), then that's what I'll be doing--probably assembling the dress form that Annette gave me. That's something that I wrote down as an obstacle to last week's sweeping chore, blocking the flow, because it's just sitting on the floor in the way. So that's probably what this one will be.
• Run your hands over every wall in your house. This is another become-intimate-with-your-space thing. The author uses a very cool image: Imagine that you're touching the skin of a whale and your house is this living, breathing thing. I love that. Especially because almost all of our walls are blue :)
• Buy fresh flowers (this is going to be a weekly thing, every week when I pick up the groceries). Determine your style. DONE. Turns out I like something called "organic modern," which incorporates the clean lines and humor of modern style but the wood and other materials of Asian and other organic styles.
• Find a new recipe and cook one meal at home. DONE. I cook from a new recipe five nights a week. Tonight I made carne asada.
  
  Choose the date for your housewarming. Haven't done this yet. Eight weeks from the start is the first week in June, but I might wait a few weeks. Also? We've been in this house for ten years this month. Is a housewarming really appropriate?

So that's what's happening Chez Bee. I'm having a blast with it, even though it's really time- and energy-consuming. Today what I did was work in the dining room, which is where the outbox is and next to the kitchen. I used the pomodoro timer in my current task-management app, KanbanFlow, which sets up 25 minutes of work then a five-minute break, but with a 15-minute break every fourth break. During each break, I'd get up and do another bit of the kitchen clearing. It worked out really well for my productivity both for work and for the home cure. A++ would try again.

clean-plate cleanse, day 3

blogging so much because my life is so fascinating lately! right? yeah, don't answer that. really it's just because there are a lot of Things going on, lots of changes and new projects, that i'm photographing (well, if you can call them "photographs") and want to remember later.

so.

here is this morning's not-very-tasty-but-good-for-me-so-i-finished-it-anyway spinach juice thing:

a lovely color of green and not terrible tasting but definitely not something i'm going to look forward to for the next 18 days or whatever it is. but good for me! and i like to do things that are good for me.

also today i got most of the way through the muslin for my laura skirt. i'd have finished the muslin and maybe even gotten the real fabric cut out if it hadn't been for those meddling kids. i mean if i hadn't needed to come upstairs to look up how to do gathering stitches. that's a thing that cal patch thought i knew, which i don't. i mean, i know about them like i know about driving stick shift: i get it in theory but god help me if i try to put it into practice. at least i can't kill anybody with gathering stitches (as far as i know). anyway, progress shots:

first task of the day was to sew together the ends of the yokes (one outside yoke and one facing yoke). but, being the super sleuth that i am, i noticed immediately that the ends of my front and back yoke pieces weren't the same depth, which would look funny. so i marked and trimmed off half an inch from the bottom of the back yoke pieces and the corresponding pattern piece.

have i mentioned that i really love my rotary cutter? love it. it's magical.

next task was to sew the outside yoke pieces to the upper edge of the skirt pieces. i made this more difficult than it needed to be because i started out pinning the wrong edge of the yoke pieces to the skirt edge, but i figured it out before i did any sewing. also i drew no blood, so that's a plus. i didn't do a terrible job, but i did have a tiny unintended dart

where i failed to ease the curves together. this task involves sewing together two curves that are mirror images of one another, which is trickier than it sounds, at least for a novice like me. 

i also accidentally sewed the skirt seam allowance closed

which is *definitely* something that i would take out and redo if this were the real skirt. on the muslin, i'm not sweating it, but i did take photos of my mistakes so i'd remember and learn from them.

the next task was to sew the yoke facing to the outside yoke, which was relatively untraumatic. so no photos of that. bonus: still no blood.

spoiler alert: no blood drawn all day. i'm still awake for another five hours or so, but i don't expect to be handling any sharp objects. so unless jack-jack plays roughly with me between now and then, probably i won't have bled on anything. and that's a pretty good day, in my book.

but i digress: after sewing the outside yoke to the skirt and the yoke facings to the outside yoke, then it's time to flip the facings to the inside and attach them. this covers the seam that joins the outside yoke to the skirt and adds some stability at the waist. i think. anyway, this part was fun, but i still managed to do a not-very-good job.

i skipped the basting and went straight from pinning (shown here) to sewing. that's mainly because basting falls into the same category as driving stick shift and sewing gathering stitches. so i'll be looking that up tonight, too. (really? she wants me to pull out a hand needle and thread for this part? am i in prehistoric times or something?)

i did okay with this part. after the pinning (and, in theory or if you're a Good Sewist, the basting), you edge stitch the waist and the yoke part you just pinned. you're doing it from the public side of the skirt, which means that you can't see all the pinning you just did or the way the folded yoke facing meets the seam. which is *probably* why she wanted me to baste that beforehand.

whatever. i do what i want.

(i know that at least one friend is laughing right now because she knows that i am a goody two shoes who follows the rules. i do feel guilty as hell about it, if that helps. i'll be doing it correctly for the real skirt.)

so. anyway. i didn't screw it up too badly, but i sewed a dart down in the wrong direction (again, something i'd fix in the real fabric but not an issue for the muslin):

but overall it's not awful.

and, to finish the seams, i tried a couple of the stitches on my machine:

(insert "I have no idea what I'm doing" meme here.)

the zigzag stitch is the one i'll try to use, but wider and more carefully, i think. no idea what the other one is. go home, sewing machine; you're drunk.

so at the end of the day, this is what i have:

front of skirt, with ruffle piece waiting to be sewn on, and

back of skirt. the ruffle is one strip of fabric, 50 percent longer than the hem sweep plus seam allowances, sewn into a circle. now i just have to figure out the gathering business and attach it. and then i get to work on the real skirt! 

i rewarded myself for my productive afternoon with a yummy dinner of quinoa, adzuki beans, kale, and pineapple-mango salsa.

(the quinoa and beans are under there, i swear.) and i'll have an apple later with some almond butter. the quinoa was already cooked from day 1 breakfast, and the beans already rinsed from the day 1 smoothie, so this was super easy to throw together. nommy.

oh, and my PSA of the day: turn on the air conditioning if it's hot. i've been sewing in our dining room, which is on the first floor and therefore not air conditioned, and i was cranky and woozy and tired all day yesterday. today, i flipped on the room air conditioner in there and was happy as a clam. a sew-y little clam.

happy (and sad) anniversaries

eight years ago today, we closed on our house.

two days after that, we went to see some dogs that were up for adoption. we ended up bringing them home with us and moving into the house almost three weeks earlier than planned.

there was this handsome guy for my handsome guy:

and this silly girl for this silly girl:

well, "moving in" = bringing a futon over and sleeping on the floor because actual moving-in weekend with furniture and such wasn't until almost three weeks later. (the sad part of the story is that my kitty kuan yin got to see very little of me during that time because she stayed at our apartment a block away so as not to be subjected to the dogs and too much change so quickly. mean but beloved old girl died two years later, to the day, from dog-adoption day. i just realized that and am sad all over again.)

kuan yin, in the old apartment:

LET ME GO I HATE AFFECTION

and yet i must sit on you at all times.

i feel the need to commemorate these special dates somehow, but we just ordered in *last* night.

rap and architecture

this is not brain bleach, but WOW is it cool. 

 

we have a new house!

not literally, but it's like it's new. the interior walls have been primed and painted. the radiators have been stripped, primed and painted to gorgeous pewter-toned glory. new level subfloors have been installed and maple hardwood laid over them. the space is now light, bright, solid, and quiet. no more squeaks and shudders. it's gorgeous.

i haven't taken any real after pictures, just a few shots of zuzu in the chair we found along beechwood boulevard and reupholstered, now at home in the second-floor bay window (living room). this beautiful view is mine from the sofa (we've ordered a new one of those, too, scheduled for delivery the first week in march).

zuzu is chilling. jack-jack, on the other hand, is walking around the house pointing out all the things that have changed. this is his job as supervisor, and he takes it very seriously.

toons!

saturday night, mr. bee and i had grownup time! we dressed up (okay, not much, but a little) and went to the toonseum and eleven with our friends liz and manos. it was so fun!

a year ago, i'd finished knitting my sunrise circle jacket but never hemmed it (it has a turned hem around all the edges). it languished for many months; i finally hemmed everything except one sleeve a month or two ago, and then decided that i wanted to wear it last night. so i hurriedly hemmed the sleeve and wore it! it was cozy and soft on a snowy night, so it was perfect (even though it was a little big in the waist--i closed it using a pedestal button, and it puckered a lot).

pics because it happened. i tried posing in front of a decal of bugs on the wall at the museum, but mr. bee kept trying and trying and trying with his phone camera. so that is why there are five shots, and i am sharing them with you because it cracks me up that he kept shooting. he was still unhappy with them, but i was bored of posing :)

the museum is super cool. there was a looney tunes exhibit in the main gallery, then a small keith haring exhibit in the hallway, and finally an exhibit of newspaper comics. AND they do not discourage photography! just no flashes. so i snapped a few shots of things i thought were cool:

the gift shop was excellent. small, but a nicely curated collection of books of and about animation and comics. i bought a copy of metamaus (i have kind of a thing for art spiegelman work and already have the original issues of maus and maus 2, bought a french hardback of maus and maus 2 at an excellent comics shop in switzerland this spring, and bought a copy of in the shadow of no towers this summer finally). i love that it's in our town :)  

a good time was had by all. and of course dinner was delicious :)

in other news, the floors are all finished and the stuff is all back in the house. the radiators are supposed to be finished cleaning tomorrow night. then we get them brought back and loaded into the house, mr. bee paints them, and the plumbers hook them up. THEN the flooring guys come and finish the stairs, and then i can have the organizers come back to finish up the unpacking, and our house will be ours again. AND we're getting a new sofa (espresso, chunky weave). I AM SO EXCITE.

first snow!

this morning brings us our first snow of the season. so pretty! it does make me question our sanity, though: we're about to have all of our radiators taken over to pennsylvania metal cleaning for a good dip and strip. it's the place that did the same for the first radiator we had done, a few years ago when we were doing the last round of major renovations, and that radiator is gorgeous. it's one of my favorite things in the house, actually. (we did that one then because that room was completely gutted, but we couldn't quite swing paying for all of them at once.) it's not cheap, but the result is jaw-droppingly beautiful. all those layers of paint from centuries of redecorating get stripped away (and the radiators are cleaner and therefore more efficient), leaving bare, gleaming metal and all those details of the turn-of-the-century craft shine through. just gorgeous. anyway, it's not really practical to do one at a time because the whole plumbing system has to be taken down and drained before any can be taken out.

and next week begins the installation of our new hardwood floors throughout pretty much the whole house. we're not doing part of the first floor, where there are still dropped ceilings (we didn't do any renovations there earlier) and a kitchen to be renovated, so we'll live there while the work is being done, which will take a couple of months, i think. but the whole second floor except the darkroom and bathroom (which andrew redid a couple of years ago) will get new floors, and the whole third floor except the to-be-built bathroom (it's gutted except for the laundry machines) will be done. "done" in our case means that they (nova flooring) will first create a level surface by laying plywood and oriented strand board (osb) on low spots and then pouring self-leveling concrete. this will happen on all three stories of the house. and they'll add a support post in the basement to accommodate the extra weight. it kind of gives me the willies to think about our house collapsing under the weight stress of three levels of all this wood and concrete, but i'm trusting the pros to take care of things. 

anyway, before they can install anything, the radiators need to be removed, so this is why the dip and strip is happening now. right after the first snow of the season. and right before thanksgiving, which we host every year. they assure us that the first floor will be finished in time for entertaining, but i'm guessing that we won't have radiators back in then unless we can convince the plumbers to bring back a couple at a time. we'll see about that.

so space heaters, warm clothes, blankets, and snuggling will be key parts of our november and december. the results will be worth it--i can't wait! (note to self: take before pictures asap!)

so many things, so little time.

well. there is lots to say and i have little energy to write, but i need to get it all down tonight.

i'll start by saying that andrew and i celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary on saturday, and it was terrific. we dropped the dogs off at the cozy inn (warning: stupid music plays, but you can turn it off at the "music off" link beneath the changing pictures) and headed down to berryville, virginia, for the shenandoah valley fiber festival. it was my first time going to this one, and it was really nice. calm, friendly, spacious, a little warm but not too, and lots of vendors. and most indoors, making weather a minimal concern even if it had been bad. i was not very spendy and bought just two skeins: dragonfly fibers dragon sock in the titania colorway, which is a beautiful tone-on-tone emerald green and a nice sproingy tight twist,

and lizard toes isobel, which is a fingering blend of merino, cashmere, and nylon in a variegated grey and brown.

the dragon sock is earmarked for the tour de sock; my team is the team that rocks (slowly), made up of five members of the rockin sock club, and socks that rock is by far my largest stash, but dragonfly fibers is one of the sponsors and we get double points for using its yarn, so. i am competitive. what?

the isobel was just calling to me from the aisle and i waltzed into the booth and grabbed it, felt the cashmere and knew i had to have it, and THEN realized that it was a yarn by someone i'd met on lazy, stupid, and godless just a couple of days earlier. it will make beautiful weaving. on which more later.

after the festival, we checked into our hotel. we stayed at the aloft winchester, and let me sum up right here, unambiguously so that there is no confusion: DO NOT STAY AT THIS HOTEL. it is pretty. it has a snack bar. that's about all the good i can say about it. oh, and i guess it wasn't too expensive ($116 including taxes for one night). why did we hate it so much? here we go, chronologically: i was too stupid to check where it was located and should have booked something in the old town. my bad. not the fault of the hotel. but a bummer. whatever. so we walk in, and the young woman behind the desk is angrily flipping through a binder. chin on her hand, scowling, nearly ripping the pages out as she turns the pages, looking for something she's not finding. she doesn't acknowledge us (we are in her line of sight peripherally and the lobby was small--we know she saw and heard us) for literally about five minutes. when she finally does, she makes sure to tell us how crappy her day is going and that it's just beginning. this line of conversation continues throughout our (fortunately relatively brief) interaction. at the end of said interaction, she pushes a couple of card keys at me and starts to turn back to her computer problems (also a topic of complaint during our time providing hotel-desk-clerk therapy). so i ask, "what's the room number? is this it?" and i find it written in tiny letters on the card-key envelope. "what's the best way to get to that?" (any other time i've checked into a hotel, the checker-in has made sure to show and tell me my room number and then give explicit directions to the room. not this one. she had Things to Do.) so she tells us and then returns to her work. we head to room 226. it's cool. it's modern. sleek. we settle in for a little nap before dinner.

we walked around the pedestrian area for a little while before dinner, then headed to the restaurant. here's me on our walk. i was a hand-knits fool: february lady sweater, kalajoki socks, and earth and sky shawl.

 

dinner was AMAZING. i'd found (thanks, google!) and reserved a table for two at one block west. again, unambiguously, i'll offer this: DO EAT AT THIS RESTAURANT. so good! i started with this fabulous composed salad:

(oops, sideways; i'll figure out how to fix that). it's a mixture of asian pears, butternut squash, and spiced pecans with an apple-cider reduction. omg so good. also excellent french bread. very frenchy. i had a hanger steak with dragon-something (a theme!) wax beans and black kale. i love hanger steak. :) and then we shared a flourless chocolate cake called le bete noir. it was warmer and had a different texture from other flourless cakes i've had--almost like a flan, except that i don't like flan. not custardy, just soft and warm like that. omnomnom.

and then we were completely stuffed and drove back to the hotel. we were surprised (and, i confess, unimpressed) to see the desk clerk cozily adjusting the shirt of a young man who was enjoying the attention quite a bit, both enjoying pounding music and a lively party going on around them in the lobby bar. we were grateful to be headed to the peace of our room.

we thought. but we could hear EVERYthing from our room. we were annoyed. but we watched some tv and went about our business and tried to ignore them. this was doable until we tried to go to sleep. at 10:15 (yes, i am old), i phoned the front desk and asked about how late we should expect the music to be going on. "about 12:30, maybe a little later," came the answer. no apology, no concern. so i hung up. what could i do? 

then andrew suggested that we request a different room, so i called back. she had one more room, on a higher floor and at the other end of the hotel. why the hell hadn't we been given that one in the first place? i do not know. so we moved and had a decent night after that. but never any note of concern or apology from the desk clerk.

the morning-shift guy was a whole different kind of employee. genuinely aksed how our night was, just a general air of here-to-serve. too bad he hdn't been on the night shift.

we headed back to town for breakfast before hitting the road: the amherst diner. another good choice. not speedy, particularly, and not any prettier than any other old diner, but a good diner. i'd go again.

and that was our weekend. i'd spent a lot of it stressed and worried, despite the beautiful scenery and wonderful company, because i am having endometrial ablation tomorrow morning and had received a call friday afternoon saying that they couldn't clear me for anesthesia because of an abnormality on my ekg. so i'd worried all weekend about how i was going to chase down doctors and tests to get cleared by wednesday morning, given that i have a rush project at work right now that really needed to get to the author by COB today. (it didn't. sorry.) but monday morning i was able to get all the paperwork faxed and signatures transmitted, so i'm all cleared for tomorrow. i'm very nervous still, mostly about the IV needle (i HATE needles, serious phobia, like the only thing i'm actually phobic about), but also about the anesthesia not working and going through what i went through five years ago in the colonoscopy. but i remind myself that needles are not (generally) fatal and that i have survived being raped and the rape-like colonoscopy and that i shall therefore survive this thing tomorrow. i will be grateful to be under anesthesia finally and not worrying about this any more.

so. weaving: i start an eight-week course on weaving at the pittsburgh center for the arts on saturday, and i am SO excite. i learned to weave this summer at woven art in lansing but haven't had anyone here to help me learn more, and there are a few more things i'm ready to learn. the classes are three hours every saturday, and i am so excited to learn and make some more fun stuff.

and of course nerd wars and tour de sock both start on saturday, so those will be good for keeping me busy. 

oh! and i almost forgot: we brought nova flooring out today to have a look at our dr. seuss-ity house, and it looks like they might be the answer for us. we hope to have an estimate in a couple of days. now to choose actual flooring! i'm SO looking forward to entertaining at home again. :squeezesigh:

cats and their neuroses

we did have some regression in the litter-box department for about a week. it was tearfully frustrating for me, thinking that we really *were* going to have to surrender jack-jack and chloe to a shelter and declare ourselves true failures in this effort. we had a perfect week and then a perfectly awful (pee outside the boxes every damned day) week. i was discouraged.

but we seem to be back on track now. i'd moved the boxes away from the wall to create a few inches of space on all four sides of each box. this was on someone's advice, though i can't remember whose for sure. i think it was the behaviorist, but i was collecting advice from so many sources that it's hard now to remember. anyway, i did that, and every single day i would find pee behind one or more of the boxes, between the box and the wall. it was always on top of one of the pee pads, which made it easier to clean up (yay chux!), but still. frustrating.

but i decided, screw the advice, i'm pushing the boxes back against the wall again. all four boxes, flush against the wall. still several inches of space between the boxes for sweeping and such, and still room in front of the boxes, and still nothing above the boxes, baby gate still keeping the dogs out of the room, and full visibility to and from the boxes. just pushed them back against the wall. and not one accident since then. all the elimination has been in those four boxes all week. yay jack-jack and chloe! 

cleaning the boxes has become part of my daily routine. i usually do it as soon as i've done my own potty business in the morning, before go downstairs for breakfast. the boxes stay clean, and it's really not a big deal at all, it turns out, because all the boxes are in one room, so it's just one fell swoop of scooping into one trash bag and it's done. i straighten out the chux (which get bunched up with the paw sweeping) as i go. takes maybe a minute, and everybody is happy.

we'd kept the painters out of there last week, which means that it's the least-finished room in the house now (we'd painted the walls years ago, in a lovely color of--surprise!--blue, but andrew had stripped the trim). i don't have any idea how we're going to make way for the flooring to go in and still give the cats a place to potty all day (god, i HOPE it's just a one-day project in that room), but we are officially okay putting new floors in there. (again: yay chux!) molyneaux has sent someone out with a few samples and to take preliminary measurements; she'll phone tomorrow to set up a time to bring out more samples, and we should have new floors very soon. we're thinking medium-toned medium- to wide-plank hardwood; i like the finer grain of maple and cherry more than oak, but we'll see what she brings. this is not something that seems easy to shop for online, even just window-shopping.

a raveler turned me onto the blog the way of cats last week, and today's post is relevant, so i thought i'd share it.

all six of us are in one room today, which makes me very happy. the furry four are sleeping, and andrew and i are (duh) on our respective laptops. i have black-and-gold knitting to do during the game, which we hope hope hope is better than last week's debacle. go steelers!

color my world!

i never thought i'd see the day. we are actually finally getting paint on these walls.

we bought this house in april 2004 and lived in the first-floor apartment for two years while we rented the upstairs (two stories) apartment to another couple. we kicked them out in october 2006 and started renovating. tore down the wall separating the apartments, ripped out carpeting (hallelujah), and tore down loose plaster. i lurved demolition.

that round of renovation lasted about a year, maybe a year and a half. i've kind of blocked it out. they tore down dropped ceilings, sistered joists, tore down the decrepit, and polished up the old. but we've had barebarebare walls and ceilings since then in about two-thirds of the house, just waiting to soak up some paint and meanwhile dusting us with bright white plaster every time we brushed up against them. the visible joints and peeping-through previously textured walls mock us almost as much as the c. 1957 cracking linoleum tile that was splattered with plaster, paint, joint compound, and god knows what else; the frighteningly bendy wood floors; and the mismatched, partially torn-out vinyl flooring. the place is, in short, a mess. and not just because we're lousy housekeepers.

so a few months ago, angie's list offered one of its big deals on painting services. the contractor had excellent reports from angie's list members and was rated highly by the better business bureau, so we bought up the deal and brought the guys out for an estimate and walk-through. fast-forward a few months (the soonest we could get on their schedule), and they're suddenly here. (they were supposed to start the last week of this month, but they called andrew yesterday and were like, "we're coming tomorrow morning at 8!" we are not turning them away.) of course, this is all while i'm physically feeling like shite and having a slew of medical tests and procedures to try to make that better; it's not awesome having workers in the house amid all that. but it's totally awesome having the work done, so suck it up, right? right.

anyway. so today i needed to choose colors. i knew just what i wanted (brace yourself, because this is a big shocker):

 
it's woad (via). it is the color i would want to be the only color i could see if i could see only one color. i love it. it makes me happy.

so don (the painter) handed me the sherwin-williams color deck and told me to have at it. i looked first for the closest match i could find for the woad, and i chose distance. (weird to have that as the color name in our bedroom, but there it is.)

 
all the rest of the colors pretty much work up the lightness scale on the same card. the hallway and stairwell outside the bedroom will be bracing blue:

 
and the second-floor rooms will continue up the scale. here are some crudely colored-in floor plans:

 

 
 
all the ceilings will be bright white, and all the trim will be semigloss white. i'm very excited. next week, the floor guys come, and it's going to be like a regular house finally. our house will be a very, very fine house.