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my alarm clock went off of at 9am but i got up at 10am. why? why not! my new life's funny like that, one of the perks of unemployment. i went outside into the backyard to enjoy the nice weather and also to pick some ripe mutated tomatoes for my grandmother and aunt at the cafe. i've always thought the pungent aroma of tomatoes is very similar to a skunk smell. i don't know if this is some malfunction in my olfactory system or do others notice the similarity. in one corner of the yard a large white lily flower (lily longiform) grows conspiciously amidst the hostas and the ferns.
there is also a large pot of dark red chrysanthemums. they're not really my favorite because the flowers are so dark they hard to see. of course there are the morning glories, i got up early enough today they were still in their morning bloom. for some reason, metallic green bees seem to love morning glories. they're usually the ones hiding inside a flower, aggressively fighting with any intruders that dare to visit. i saw a fight this morning, noticed the loud buzzing first, then i saw at least two bees wrestling inside of a morning glory flower, knocking round grains of pollen everywhere (i think they were wrestling, maybe it was something else). back inside, my sequoias are doing well after an incident earlier this week when i forgot to water them and they almost died. these seedlings have an especially sentimental value for me because on the day i bought my house they started growing, the symbolism too overt to miss.

i left belmont and it should come as no surprise that i went to watertown home depot first, to see if they had my eggshell primer. i've come to expect disappointment from this particular home depot branch, as the shelf was bare of what i was looking for. i left and then started picking up supplies for the cafe, starting with waltham fruits by fresh pond. later, i got some milk and cheese. with the delivery done, i went to the somerville home depot, which has a much better inventory, and bought two cans of my crucial primer.

today i was prepared to paint colors but spent the entire day still priming the edges. i left last night with the edges of the master bedroom unfinished. i used a long plastic edger to paint the area right above the baseboards. for the areas below and above the ceiling trims, i just did it by hand, not worrying too much if some paint got on the trim as long as there were no streak marks.

general painting wisdom says to paint from the top to the bottom. i'm not sure if i'm following that advice. i guess i could start with the ceilings, paint them all the final white (for the ceilings i figured i'd only do a single coat of white ceiling paint over the already white primer) before doing anything else. i guess i'll do that first tomorrow. the hard part isn't using the roller on the ceiling but using the brush along the edges, that's detail work and that takes a lot of time. at least it does for me, because i'm very careful, making sure the paint is even, try to minimize the brushmarks, make sure the paint isn't bleeding into areas it's not suppose to be in. once the ceilings are done, i'll start doing the walls. finally, i'll paint the trims and the windows and doors and baseboards.

halfway done with priming, i was taking a break, organizing the cans of paint and putting them in the rooms where they'll be used. that's when i realized that the red that i got wasn't the red that i had asked for. it was off by one number, and i thought maybe it wasn't so bad, maybe i could end up using it, but after checking with the benjamin moore color swatches, there was no way i could suck it up and use that color. it was the wrong color, end of story, i had to go back to the store and explain. i know those two cans of paint were as good as useless. even if i took them back to the store, it's not like they have a magical process where they can separate out the colors. once a can of paint is mixed, that's the end of story. a disclaimer on top of the lid even says, "no exchange or returns." i figured i was screwed, i'd have to pay again for the replacement paints, but i knew it wasn't my fault, i had written down in my notebook the color code, the guy just mixed it wrong. so i jumped into the car the two buckets of paint, raced down mass ave, and explained to the same guy from yesterday what happened, showing him my notebook with the numbers as proof. he mixed two cans of the right color (salsa) and gave them to me, free of charge. i came back to cambridge, sigh of relief, minor disaster avoided.

what use to be nice clean rosen papered floors are now covered in spots and smears of white primer paint. thank god i decided to paper the floors before painting. some of the paint on the floor are from ceiling drips, others are from where i pour out the paint, and i'd say a majority of the marks on the floor are from stepping in paint and then tracking it around everywhere. i paint barefoot, which is what the appliance repairman suggested, because if you step on paint you can feel it right away, which prevents you from them tracking it unknowingly through the rest of the house. still, sometimes i get lazy, and even after i step on a drop of paint, i keep on going, completely disregardly the mess i'm making.

i wrapped up at about 7pm, carefully washing the paint tray and the paint brush in the kitchen sink, making sure none of that excess paint splattered. i took a few minutes and sat at the kitchen table, finally getting a chance to really rest. today marks the official 3 month of house ownership. 3 months that went by pretty fast, and i've yet to move into my brand new old house, although i'm very close, i can see the finish line. while drinking my can of soda, i thought to myself, "i have to go home." and just like in that movie almost famous, a different voice in my head said, "you are home," and flashed an imaginary hand in my face. except my house ain't rock and roll and my mind is a poor substitute for kate hudson.