Lovely long weekend

Sadly, Joe and I didn’t make it up to Torch Lake this weekend as we’d planned – rental car fell through. The whole situation is pretty ridiculous. After getting a run-around about whether or not there’d actually be a car for us, hundreds of dollars of extra fees and deposits were tacked on making the car unaffordable. We’re trying to be really responsible and live within our means and pay down our credit cards and that of course makes us bad candidates for car rentals. That’s how the industry works, I guess – fuck you coming and going.

Instead we decided to take our long weekend (I even took Tuesday off to make for an extra-long weekend) and enjoy the city, the apartment and each other. Well, kind of. We had our first fight on Friday. Not a fight, per se, but our first “I’m really mad at you right now” moment. It went something like this:

Joe: Hey, sucks about the lake.

Me: Yeah.

Joe: Let’s go grab some dinner.

Me: Sure.

Joe: Thai sound good? What about bar food?

Me: Whatever.

(hours pass…I sit like a sad lump on the couch)

Joe: So…no dinner?

Me: Whatever.

(Joe gives up and makes us a quick dinner at home)

(this is all internal/unspoken)

Joe: Give me an answer like a human being!

Me: Don’t feel like it!

Joe: Maybe you should just throw yourself a pity party, Debbie Downer.

Me: Maybe I will! And you’re not invited!

Joe: I wouldn’t come anyway!

Me: GREAT. FINE.

Joe: FINE.

Eventually I got over myself and started acting like a human being again. Clearly I have to work on communicating my needs (a night to be miserable over not going north) so Joe doesn’t feel like I’m shutting down on him (which I was). It’s a process.

Saturday we hit up the local farmer’s market and got a BOUNTY of fresh veggies for an unbelievably low price. Looking forward to going back even earlier this weekend to get some local meats!

Then we went to the Home Despot to look at paint. I think we’ve got the living pretty much picked out and the kitchen too and the bedroom. We trotted home with supplies and primer, ready and excited to get the show on the road.

So we get back to the apartment. We prep. We change. We sand the paneling. We wash the paneling. Joe straps on his ventilator mask. We. Are. Ready!

Joe does some prep

The before shot - hideous wood paneling

And then we paint. And paint. And paint. For hours. Oh, I admit it, I got pretty whiny. I was ready to be done. Joe was all, “let’s just paint till we fall over exhausted and can’t lift our arms anymore!” and I was all, “I HATE PAINTING.” All told, we painted for six or seven hours before calling it a day. The walls were successfully primered, but I can’t believe it took so long. That’s the smallest room in the apartment!

Primed wall with test patch

Two more walls with test patches

Our poor painty floor

Joe cleans brushes

The color isn’t showing up great in those pictures, but it’s a lovely deep red-burgundy-garnet color. Afterwards we went out and got some food in our tummies.

All that work exhausted Miss Josie

Seb tried to help, but just got a painty face for his trouble.

Sunday I declared a Lay Around All Day day, so we did. And it was good.

Monday we ran errands, including laundry, which makes me a happy camper. Also, good news: now we own a vacuum! No motivation to continue painting.

YAY!

Tuesday we did some more lazing about (good stuff). Then Joe made a fantastic salsa and I made cake. A chocolate zucchini cake, to be exact. With Hershey’s cocoa icing. What else?

Hello, delicious...

OM NOM NOM NOM

All told, a great weekend. Bit of a rocky start, but that happens and we both got over it pretty fast. And now I only have three days in my work week until I get another weekend…a Highland Games weekend at that!