It Ain't Easy Being Green

The Birthday Girl
July 1

Ah, the house is painted at last. Except for the white trim, which I absolutely refuse to think about right now. Especially since I'm green enough already, and one color at a time is plenty. I made it just in time, too, since I'm leaving tomorrow for a trip to Gold Country.

Naturally the paint job didn't go as planned. You already know about the color trouble, and how my dreams of a light, creamy yellow went down in Summer Ivy flames. You may not have heard

that my mechanical force field made two, count 'em, T-W-O sprayers go punkity-punkity. Fearing that if I waited any longer I wouldn't finish, or get the house insurance reinstated, I began painting by hand. Here, you will see a photo of the house, before any painting or scraping had been done. It's far enough away that you can't see most of that pink paint flaking off in large chunks.

Sunrise was a bit early for me to start. This far north, it comes at 4 something for quite a while. Today it moved all the way to 5:01. Ick! So I got a fashionably late start, but then would work until dark. Since summer sunsets in this wide-open land aren't till after 9:00, those were some very long workdays. I'm grateful for the 4-5 hours of total darkness, since apparently some Alaskans & Canadians never get fully dark during the summertime.

Friday I didn't paint. We had some huge thunderstorms on the way, and the last thing I wanted to see was my paint-stakingly applied green washing away in the downpour. Oh, such lightning as there was! I got the most pitiful lightning photo you can imagine. Itty bitty digital cameras aren't the ideal format to capture the elusive electrical bolts, since from the time you push the button until it snaps the picture, several elephants have had time to run through the frame without making it into the photo. How I got even that blurry snapshot, I'm still not entirely sure.


Sunday was my big break. With the assistance of my brother-in-law, whom I now owe approximately 756 loaves of banana bread, the house was finished. He brought over an industrial-strength painter and a tractor.

Jack and I took turns standing in the scooper part of the tractor, being lifted up to scrape and paint the highest parts of the house. Mom called while it was my turn. "What do you mean, 'She's up in the tractor'???"

I was already green enough before my little mishap. While happily chatting with Tina, and multitasking with the sprayer, I stepped downwind and sprayed, just as a wild gust of wind went by. Splat! The phone, my face, hands, arms, and every hair on my head were covered with green back-spray. The whites of my eyes were all that still showed through the haze.

It went so fast. Pshhht, pshhhht, pshhhhht, just a few minutes per side. Amazing. Then Jack cleaned out the sprayer, while forgetting one last strip in the back. By the time I finished that with scraper and brush, my hands had about stopped working. They didn't even want to hold a fork at suppertime. I'm trying to rest up today so I can wrap my fingers around a steering wheel tomorrow. Luckily, I can still type.

Just a few more hours...California or bust!

Until the next adventure,

Noni Beth < - - - even her mother makes fun of her new complexion ~ Summer Ivy