Right Foot on Yellow

Rob and I spent this afternoon (after church and our regular jaunt to a little greasy spoon with friends afterwards) doing little tasks around the house to get it ready to go on the market. I mostly painted, touching up walls here and there where they have gotten banged up and/or slobbered on by our dog. I also finally finished the trim in the kitchen, only 2+ years after we had it put up. Our window in the kitchen is right over the sink, which made painting its trim quite a challenge. It resembled nothing more than a game of Twister as I contorted myself to reach all the various parts of the window trim while hovering over the sink.

We own a copy of Twister with the above picture on the box and Rob and I are always a bit disturbed by the expression on the face of that kid in the lower right. Such lasciviousness from someone so young! Definitely up to no good! And what about that poor curly-haired girl?

The painting fell to my lot because it turns out that Rob really abhors it. He is not a big fan of any kind of work around the house, but he is quite capable and usually willing to do other things. Painting, however, is the ne plus ultra of DIY misery for him. I don’t get it, I must admit. Painting is cheap and pretty easy, and it can be a certain kind of fun, especially when you are painting walls a color that you are excited about. I dislike painting trim and edging out a wall, but merrily rolling some brilliant new color onto an expanse of wall has a particular transformative, metamorphic delight to it. With just some paint and a few tools, you can be living in a WHOLE NEW ROOM. The last time I was at Home Depot, I browsed through the paint chips a bit, contemplating what new colors I might like to try in our next house. I’m thinking there might be a Tiffany blue and a tangerine orange, and maybe a grassy green. I’ll just have to find someone other than Rob to do the actual painting.

It is now less than a week until our house is listed for sale. We have pretty much all the little projects finished and now only need to begin the cleaning marathon that will be living here while it is on the market. I am giving myself a few days at the beginning of this week not to worry about the cleaning/orderliness too much, and then it will be time to kick the house upkeep into high gear. I am a naturally organized, neat person and I can get the house in good shape for company with the best of them, but I feel a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of perhaps months of unrelenting neatness. As Elizabeth Bennet’s uncle might say, it will be tidiness and cleanliness enough to satisfy even my enthusiasm for them.