Blinds and Banana Muffins and "Home . . ."

Painting station . . .

I am so sorry for the delay in reporting about the Blind Project, truly, because I know y'all have been sitting on freakin' PINS AND NEEDLES, waiting for the results. I mean, really, I asked myself: Self? Who doesn't have at least one set of pathetic vertical blinds hanging limply in one's house, that one is just dying to keep, if only one knew how to paint them?! What? Only two of you? And you like yours just the way they are? Well, just stfu and humor me, because I went through all the trouble already, okay? Okay, thanks.

What? Jen didn't put down newspaper?!? Surprised . . . not. 

For the record, it did not take me two days to paint these babies, just took that long to report my results to y'all, as I had things come up that interfered with reporting my results (like, a life, for one. Not much of a life, but a life, nonetheless. . . ). The Blind Incident itself took only a half a day—maybe a third of a day—and shouldn't have even taken that long, but I kept running into little self-induced snafus along the way, so what should have been a few hours, tops, ended up taking several.

Drying station . . .

Beautiful and bright white . . .

Even so, I wouldn't discourage anyone from taking on such a project, if so inclined (which, I'd guess 99.9999% of you aren't. I'm speaking to the .0001% of my reading audience—which, after that calculation, has been reduced to the physical equivalent of a deer tick—who still have oh-so-last-century vertical blinds hanging on their windows). The results of my blinds are stunning—I mean, you can only go up! from sponge painted vertical blinds, right? With proper preparation, the whole dealio would only take a few measly hours to complete. But alas, my brain is not wired for short versions of anything—I always, conveniently, forget this very critical detail—so I end up with long versions of anything I do. But, I also end up solving a lot of world problems with all the extra think-time, so it's really a bonus and quite economical on a global scale, when, for example, you compare it to how long a UN world summit sessions last, in comparison. Too bad no one asks me for my take on that dealio. Basically, the gist of my message is, don't throw something that is old out, if you can breathe new life into it with a coat of paint. Think: a book shelf. fireplace. car. spouse.

Blinds integrate beautifully w/ my life. Or, at least my kitchen.

Soooo  . . . short version of blind painting is this: remove blinds, paint, let dry, put up again.  I sooo wish I could say the reality of it was so simple. The four step version only applies if conditions are optimal: if the weather is great, if you have ample space to lay out fresh painted slats (ribs? spokes? vanes? not really sure what to call the long dangly pieces of vertical blinds—I'm kinda partial to "ribs" today. Maybe I'm hungry) to dry, if you remember how the mechanism of the blinds operate before you reattach all the ribs (so you don't have to unattach, reattach, unattach then reattach again, as some people might have to. Not saying I personally, did this—just saying some might . . .).

Rocco: Why the hell you got to be paintin' all the time, woman?!

Each of the four steps took, on average, an hour at most. Painting wasted a year of my life took the most time, which wouldn't have been a bad deal at all, but it rained like a cow pissin' on a flat rock (a nod to my heavenly Dad, for bestowing upon me the useful gift of colorful phrases that peppers my language and life, and might have even cost a job or two!), all day and into the evening Thursday, which totally threw a wrench into the system I had envisioned. See, I was going to remove all the ribs, lay 'em out on sawhorses, tables, benches, whatever else I had on hand—outside— paint, let dry, then reinstall. But, because of the rain, I had few places to lay all the ribs, and had to work in shifts, and it didn't take long before my house became a bizarre obstacle course of eight foot horizontal spears through which I had to weave and bob, all night long, a tedious, boring process of which I'll spare details, other than via the few included photos.

So, after all that work, was it worth it? Am I in love with my new blinds? Am I happy that I wasted a half a day of my life that I'll never get back on this project? Nooooo, I'm not exactly in love with the blinds, but I also don't despise them any longer—I believe I'm now I'm in like with them, and that's not a bad thing now, is it? I also think I bought myself a few years of Blind Tolerance, till I really know what I want to do with them, if anything. And that is more than enough time wasted on this sad little project, so I'll cut it short. Now.

Banana muf. mix: mayo, flour, sugar, choc chips, walnuts...

In this entry, I was also going to include quick li'l tidbits about a fab and easy-peasy banana muffin recipe that has become my go-to recipe—because I was up till nearly 2 a.m., finishing those #%$(*$@ blinds, and got kinda hungry and the fruit flies pelting my head suddenly reminded me that, once again, I had a bunch of bananas on the counter that were now far too ripe to be fit for human consumption. . . I was also going to give y'all a recap of the outdoor concert I went to, at the Cabooze last night Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros. But since my eyelids suddenly feel like lead, I'm going to just have to tease you with a couple pics, until I and get back to you later on those hotter'n'hott topix. . . 'nite, peeps . . . xxoo

Before the contact high . . .

Can One Paint Hunter Douglas Vertical Blinds (and by "one," I mean "me," of course)?

Jen + whooping cough = bad combo. Leads to boredom which leads to Aimlessly Wandering around the house looking for Projects to do, which leads to Potential Disaster. I can truly hear Bob's voice in my head, Stay in bed, woman! You're sick! You're supposed to be resting—you'll never get better if you don't let your body recover properly! He said that kind of thing a lot to me—not that I got sick a lot, but I often don't rest properly when I do get sick because let's face it, being sick a huge waste of time. But he's not physically here to wrestle me down, so I have been trying to do the general population a favor and self-quarantine till the worst of my symptoms have quieted, and have done a pretty good job of resting the past few days, but I am now officially Stir Crazy, and want out. Now, dammit. Or at least to be up and moving. I seriously think I have bedsores from all this lying around, but I don't feel sick, other than when the coughing fit sneaks up and pile-drives me from the top rope, but other wise, I feel fine! Totally!

Motel 6 blinds, before painting

So, being up and at 'em more today than I have in a few days, I noticed a number of dings and scratches on the wall from when I moved back to the house and decided that now is the best time to take care of them. Not three weeks ago, when I was feeling better, not not four months ago, when they happened. Now, when I'm sick. So, I got a can of paint out, to touch up the dining room walls, which lead to getting another can of paint out, to touch up the basement walls, which lead to getting out the can of Vanilla White, to touch up some trim and a railing (the one that was trashed when I hung Bob's canvases the other day. Yes, when I was sick), which lead to touching up a few spots on my kitchen cabinets which lead to just painting whole damn set of cabinets not just in the kitchen but in the mud room, as well, because evidently, either the paint I used when I first painted the cabinets was a different shade of Vanilla White, or it's discolored somewhat over the years, and the touchups were glaringly obvious (probably only to me). Which got me looking sideways at the ugly Hunter Douglas vertical blinds that have been hanging over the kitchen patio door since we moved in. We have four patio doors in this house and it was my goal to eventually replace each set of dated verticals with something funkier, more up-to-date. Right now, the ones hanging sadly on the windows look like they were scavenged from a cheap motel. I would actually get rid of them entirely, but when my mom house/dog sits for me, she has to close every blind in the house at night, because she's convinced the woods behind our house is teeming with perverted peepers. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but I rarely pull the blinds unless the sun is actually, literally blinding me. Otherwise, they're more fashion than function for this chick. But, for my dear mother, I will keep them.

Cool Ikea panels. And yes, the telescope is for peeping at the neighbors.

I did replace the blinds in the bedroom with a set of really cool wide-panels from Ikea, but that was one home improvement project that took far longer than I had expected, was much more complicated than the damn Ikea stick-figure instructions lead me to believe (I still haven't sawed the excess six inches off either end of the metal panel rail, because by that point, I was ready to throw a chair through the patio door, and thought it best to just step away . . . after six years, I'm pretty sure that ain't gonna happen, ever) and turned out to be more expensive than I thought it would. Four wide panels x all the hardware x my time and labor = about a million dollars. But they look cool, and that's all that matters, when all is said and done.

So, paintbrush and paint can in hand, I'm eyeballing these sponge-painted-ish (and I mean ish) Hunter Douglas eyesores in my kitchen today, and thought, man, that'd be really expensive, to replace all the blinds in the house, not to mention a serious strain on my already fragile sanity. Suddenly, the idea occurred to me: why not paint them??!! I am not above painting anything that doesn't breath (and sometimes I do paint things that breath, like spiders that don't get out of the way of my paintbrush. And myself)! Why not at least try to paint these muthas? At the very least, if I hate 'em, I get new blinds, which is really the whole point, anyhow! Genius! In my head, I'm thinking I might potentially be saving hundreds of dollars and have really cool, custom blinds to boot, while at the same time, I can also hear Bob's logical voice saying, Yeah, but you don't even like vertical blinds! And, if you don't like how they turn out, which is very likely, knowing you, Jen, you'll have wasted all that time, when you could have just gone out and bought the blinds you wanted and saved yourself a whole lot of trouble to begin with . . . "Wasting time" is not the point, when it comes to DIY. And DYI is not about being logical. It's about being creative, and resourceful, and clever, and—and—and . . . okay, a little nuts.

Painting the fireplace . . .

So, below are a few before pics for you to see what I'm starting with. I know many might think, "Those are perfectly good blinds, Jen! Why can't you just leave well enough alone!" But, you see, my brain doesn't operate that way. My dinning room table and chairs were perfectly good in their own right, but I got sick of them and painted them black. Our fireplaces were also perfectly fine, just minding their own business, but they weren't breathing, see, so I painted them. Kitchen cabinets, same dealio. Paint is the cheapest, easiest way way to change a room, breathe new life into one's life. I've been a firm believer of this since we bought our first home, a lifetime ago. Bob didn't share this paint-o-philia of mine; mostly, he'd sigh heavily and say something like, "What are you going to do when it doesn't turn out?" To which I'd reply, "I'm not even going to worry about that because I know it will turn out, I can see it in my head!" To which he'd reply, "That's what scares me. I'm going golfing . . ." Stay tuned, kids!

Close-up of sponge-painted vanes

All vanes and valance are off—time to paint!

Tuesday morning grief poem

I know I said I wasn't going to go on and on about the "internal" stuff of this f'n grief journey, but sometimes rules are meant to be broken, and sometimes I come across something that says things so much better than I am yet able, and sometimes it feels like it will resonate with more than just me, so I sometimes feel like I just need to share, with the hopes that maybe someone else will get something from this, too. My good friend, Lisa, whose beautiful son, Sam, died just a few weeks before Bob, sent me this today. It's one of those (many) things that I read and think, "Yeah, what she said . . ." The only thing I'd add is that sometimes, all of those things happen during the course of just one day, sometimes in an hour, or perhaps the course of a few minutes . . . many times over (which makes writing about it so f'n hard; I just can't keep up with the waves) . . .  like right now, I'm feeling grief lapping at my feet, but just this morning, I had a dream about Bob, which caused me to wake up, awash in gut-wrenching sobs, which triggered a damn coughing spell, which made me cry even harder because Bob used to take such good care of me whenever I got sick—make me soup, hot tea, Excedrin, backrubs, do all kinds of extra stuff around the house, —laundry, meals, walk the dogs, yard stuff . . . all without complaining . . . and now I'm sobbing again . . .

Grief still has to be worked through.It is like walking through water.Sometimes there are little waves lapping about my feet.
Sometimes there is an enormous breaker that knocks me down.
Sometimes there is a sudden and fierce squall.
But I know that many waters cannot quench love,
neither can the floods drown it.
We are not good about admitting grief,
It is embarrassing.
We turn away, afraid that it might happen to us.
But it is part of life, and it has to be gone through.

~ Madeleine L’Engle

I should be resting. But I often don't do what I should.

So, for a while, now, I've been feeling kinda cruddy. But my mantra for the past few years has been, "If it ain't cancer, stfu," so I soldier on—finished my first MFA writing class at Hamline two weeks ago (got an A—a four point OH! for my first semester)!!! Registered for a summer class—travel writing—which starts in a few weeks), got my kettlebell certification last week and started assisting at classes (hope to be teaching my own classes within a month or so), started tackling the natural disaster that is my garage, power-washed the deck, tending the lawn (all the outdoor shit that made Bob giddy with joy, makes me seethe with distain—hacking dead branches from trees, mowing/weed wapping, garage organizing—such a waste of precious time, in my book . . makes a condo look more and more inviting as the months pass). All the while I'm whacking and weeding and hacking and cleaning, I'm also sniffing, coughing, wheezing and trying to soothe a sore throat, but thinking that what I've been fighting must be allergies—nothing too debilitating, just annoying as hell. We've had a crazy-early spring, and all the floaty stuff that usually shows up in June and July is already flying in full force out here at Wrenwood, coating everything in thick layers of pollen dust, cottonwood fur and chunks of seed clusters from some of the trees, which makes for another outdoor job—blasting the debris off the deck and sidewalk with the leaf blower. How am I ever going to enjoy a gin and tonic on the deck if this "work" gets in the way . . .

So, "it" started with a sore throat and a little hint of a cough, maybe a week and a half ago, nothing that a few magical Excedrin couldn't knock out, but quickly progressed to incessant, violent coughing that I often nearly throw up (if I could stop coughing long enough to eat anything to throw up) and have even peed in my pants, just a little, a few times. (I still have a few of Otto’s diapers on hand, which I’m thinking about strappin’ on, as I convalesce at home. He’s a big kid—with a little duct tape for extra security, and as long as I don't leave home, I should be fine.) I’m chuggin' so much lemon water and lemon-honey-infused tea, I could pee my pants just thinking about it—people keep telling me honey and lemon "WORK MIRACLES!" for a cough, but so far, the only miracle is that I haven't fallen down the steps or rolled the Jeep during a coughing attack. On the plus side, my fluid intake has been optimal the past few weeks, and my skin is quite dewy, albeit translucently-ashen. “Just allergies! It’ll get better soon!” I continued to tell myself, though I continued to get worse, not better. 

I got absolutely no sleep Sat. night, but still went in and taught a kettlebells workshop Sun. a.m. (got my kettlebell instructor's certification last weekend—another story for another time), all doped up on Excedrin, Robitussin, Burt’s Bees honey-lemon cough drops and a pot of coffee,  none of which did anything except jack me up like a meth head, and I just told everyone to stand as far away as possible so I wouldn't drench them with spittle, or inadvertently launch a kettlebell in their direction. Coughing like Typhoid Mary (who was a real person, btw), I made it through the class, but because I felt like I didn't expose enough people to my Walking Death, I decided to continue my contamination rampage, and attended an event at the Landscape Arboretum with Jill and her kids, and then off to the DQ for ice cream (where I discovered, even ice cream makes me gag . . . wonder if this was written by Nostradamus as "a sign . . ."). As I was heading home, I nearly ran my car into the path of an oncoming 18-wheeler during a coughing fit, though, at this point in my life, I’m still of the mindset that it wouldn’t be a bad thing to happen, but it didn’t, and I was down to my last 2 Excedrin (which I’ve been rationing like butter during WWII, btw, as my beloved otc drug has been recalled since January, because the plant where it’s manufactured had a potential mix-up between Excedrin and some potent opiates, and at this point, I’m thinking, I sure wish I had gotten one of those bottles of mixed up Excedrin that’s not really Excedrin . . .). I knew the signs. I've been down this path before. I am pretty sure I have f'n whooping cough. Again.

So, beaten down and defeated (and a serious threat to society), I whimpered a weak uncle, and dragged my ass into Urgent Care last night. I haven’t been in a hospital-like setting since Bob’s ordeal (maybe that's been the subliminal root of my aversion to going in sooner) and started crying as soon as I was ushered into an exam room. Anytime someone came to look at me, they’d say with such concern, “Oh, you really must be feeling awful!” and I wanted to say, “You have no fucking idea,” but I just sniffed and said, “Yeah . . . “ I secretly hoped it would also help get a doc in to see me quicker, but I think all it did was scare everyone away . . . it was about all I could do to keep from racing out of the place—as I looked around the room, it looked like every other ER that Bob and I nearly lived in from October of 2009 to January of 2011, and suddenly, I was right there again, at his side, trying to comfort him during one of endless crises . . . But I needed something to at least help me sleep, or at least stop the near-vomiting, so I stayed put and played solitaire and Mahjong on my phone to keep the crying and hyperventilating at bay, until a doc finally showed up, over two hours from when I walked through the door . . . seriously, if one had a REAL disease, one could very likely DIE in these places before one is seen by a doctor . . . at one point, I'm crying a lot—snot running down my nose, eyes blurry, I can hardly breathe, when I look down at the paper ID bracelet encircling my wrist. It has my name, some other medical mumbo-jumbo, and then my age: 54. Huh?!? My tears turn to laughter as I think—okay, I feel even older than 54 right now, but seriously, way to kick a girl when she's already down . . .

So, three hours, an episode of Seinfeld (still can't bring myself to watch much tv these days), fourteen games of solitaire, eight games of Mahjong (until my phone died and all I could do was sit and cough and cry), a chest xray, cup-peeing, mucous-membrane-swabbing and lots of crying later, I’m told I have pertussis—aka, whooping cough. Yes, again. Second time in two years. I should have known. (And crazy enough, it was two year, to the date, that I had this same thing, as Bob was recovering from his second heart attack, and we were in and out of the U endless times, for various, endless crises . . .). It's a crazy disease—very serious in infants and kids, as their tender little respiratory systems have a very difficult time handling the violent coughing that accompanies the disease. But the vaccine for it expires after about 10 years, and many people simply haven't gotten boosters after high school, hence the increase in occurrences in adults. I need to talk to my primary doc about getting a booster, as it's obvious I'm pretty susceptible to this . Oh wait, I have to find a new primary doc, first, as I haven't been to a doctor since that last whooping cough ordeal. . . ). 


I was given Rx’s for oxycodone, a bronchial inhaler and a round of antibiotics, and the sweet nurse who attended me also gave me a coffee cup bearing the clinic’s logo, brimming with all kinds of goodies (because they felt bad I had to wait so long and was so sick)—a pen, pad of post-it notes, little bottles of hand sanitizer, a refrigerator magnet (all with the clinic’s name/number, of course) AND, the BEST PART {{{{{ DRUM ROLL }}}}} not one, but TWO Target gift cards, both worth five smackeroos, all because they felt so sorry for me! I HEART BEING SICK!!!!!!!!!!! Playing the Widow Card always pays off in huge dividends . . . I really need to milk it more. . . .


And today, I woke up do discover I am now also on the rag, have some awesome cramps going on and am trying my fiercest to keep my tampon from blasting right out of me like a ballistic missile from the sheer power of my coughing jags, which forces me to perform intense Kegel exercises all day. So all-in-all, really, it’s a bonus . . . 

Everything happens for a reason, peeps. Don’t you forget it. 


(p.s. and this is what happens when narcotics and writing mix in my brain. When I'm all better again, I may regret this . . .)

Hey, where y'all been?

Since I'm finally forcing myself to stay in bed and try to get rest—which is killing me, because that damn garage ain't gonna finish cleaning itself, and the god-forsaken rock-garden/weed-patch/debris-collector/ugly mofo landscape nightmare that lines my front yard keeps getting uglier and uglier (gardening tip of the day: river rocks as landscaping material=worst idea ever, in the history of landscaping. Don't do it.), and dead pine tree branches, desperately needing to be shorn, are waving, like long, gnarly arms with nasty bony fingers, taunting and teasing me to just try and mow under them again, this time, without getting my hair all tangled up in the branches, the gutters are practically dripping debris, and—I decided this might be a good time as any to revisit this blog and maybe write a new entry . . . between the narcotics and coughing fits, let's see what happens . . . 


First of all, a little disclosure/apology/catching up/I'm not sure what . . . I've had to step back from this blog for a while (and a lot of things, frankly) and re-evaluate what the hell the point of any of this is, if there is one. There was a real point to my other blog (The Sofa King) when Bob was here—it was truly the only connection we had to the majority of family/friends/colleagues/neighbors/strangers during that 19 Month Nightmare. But after his death, I just felt like the circus freak on display here at this new blog, attempting to share this indescribable grief journey with anyone, and becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the whole deal as it unfolds. 


Since I'm feeling merciful today, I'll spare you the gory soul-searching details and cut to the chase: I've decided I do not want to be airing out my gut-wrenching personal shit out here, for all the world (yeah, all four of you) to ogle at, gasp at, to judge, roll eyes at, try to empathize with, or feel sorry for, or give pats on the back for, or whatever. Because that just ain't the kinda gal I am. But I also don't want you to go and get all, "Atta girl, because Bob wouldn't want you to be that way, either!" on me, because you don't know what Bob would have wanted for me. Maybe he would have. Maybe we had a talk before he died, as far as you know or don't, and maybe we decided that I would turn our house into an ornate shrine in his honor, playing Elvis and Stevie Ray Vaughn and Bob Mould 24/7, redecorate in red velvet and animal prints, complete with a life-size cut-out of him, that I dress every day, talk to all day, serve meals to, watch Criminal Minds with, and beat at Scrabble . . .


My point is, with that ridiculous paragraph-with-no-point above, is simple: we are all on our own journey here in life, and can only do things our way, no matter how f'ed up it appears to others. And guess what? We're all doing it right, the best way we know how, with the cards we were dealt with. We will all experience immense heartache, pain, suffering in life, and we will all react to it in the only way we can, based on who we are, what we feel is right at the time, on our backgrounds, on our experiences, on our perceptions, relationships, views on the world, and a million other factors. We try one thing, if it doesn't feel right, move onto the next thing. And the next, and the next, till we find something that does seem to feel a little more comfortable. At least that's how I work. But I can't really share that process with anyone. It's too complicated, changes far too often and too quickly to keep up, and I'll drive myself and y'all nuts, trying. I also don't need to try to prove that I loved my husband more than anyone else loves theirs, or that he was the Best Husband Ever, In the History of Husbands, or that his cancer was Worse than Anyone Else's, In the History of Cancer, or to constantly beat people over the head with, "I may be smiling outside, but I am STILL SOBBING HYSTERICALLY on the inside, DAMMIT, AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT!!!" (All of that is true, btw, but then again, it's true for most each and every one of us, or at least a variation on the theme . . .)Believe it or not, I am usually pretty tight-lipped, as far as my personal "shit" is concerned. Just ask Bob. Oh, wait, you can't . . . but, you could come over and ask the life-size cut-out . . . 


But guess what else I learned? That even if you do nothing at all, if you just lie in a fetal position all day and night, for many days and nights, and cry, or stare blankly or do whatever you want to do in the fetal position, the sun still rises and falls, and life will still drag you along, like a pebble under a glacier. I learned that The Hard Way, too. Doesn't mean I won't be at that place ever again, either, and wanna know another thing? Sometimes the only way is The Hard Way and sometimes that is okay, and very necessary on this f'n journey. Otherwise, all those "lessons" parents have been trying to pound into the thick skulls of their offspring, going way back to when God was a kid, to prevent them from doing things The Hard Way, would work, dammit! But they don't!


Because so much of this f'n journey is intensely personal, yet occupies so much of my mind, I was afraid I was going to start having seizures again (true story), but I really miss writing on a regular basis, so instead, I've decided I'm just going to tell stories here. I have lots of 'em, and they're all kinda starting to fight inside my head, like a bunch of dirty, bratty kids stuffed into a 1972 Impala heading Up North, to the cabin, with their mother and the babysitter, who is already freaking and arms are flailing because somehow a big fat bumblebee got into the car and she can't tend to the baby, who has stripped off her diaper and is flailing it out the back window, causing a construction crew on the side of the road to erupt into a cacophony of catcalls (another true story). Along this f'n journey, during Bob's ordeal and after his death, I have experienced intense, insane lows of the likes I've never experienced, and will likely continue to experience. But those don't make good stories. Well, maybe good horror stories, but I've already told y'all I don't want to be the proverbial train wreck. On this f'n journey that I never asked for, never wanted and would trade back in a heartbeat and everything I own times infinity, if given the choice, I have also experienced/felt/seen/though of things along this f'n journey that can only be described as awesome, absurd, glorious, hysterical, shocking, beautiful, odd, wondrous, inspiring, hilarious . . . and that's where the stories are . . .