"I Will Rest When I'm Dead"

Melissa Ferrick sang these words on her album Listen Hard released in 2002 and it hit me as soon as I heard them that it is truly my life motto. The past couple weeks were such a whirlwind I feel like a rock star; minus the heavy drinking, late nights and musical talent parts. Perhaps it can be attributed to inhaling so many paint fumes or the extra special workout my body got after lugging boxes up and down stairs but it is amazing to me that March is already over.

We signed the lease for the apartment, decided to move in on the 29th since it was a weekend, and immediately I was purchasing materials and packing up the tool caddy for my painting job in Maryland the following week. The morning I was leaving Matt and I decided to check on a whim how much flights would cost out of BWI if he were to drive down with me and then fly back the same day. It was so reasonable he was yelling book it and I was printing a boarding pass before either of us actually realized what was going on. We caravaned to Hartford, he parked at short term and I picked him up only going a few miles off the original route; all so I could have some company for the ride. We made it to the other airport in about seven hours and he was flying back home as I was flying down the highway to the house. Since I would be staying there during the duration of the job they left all sorts of convenient items such as a bed, towels and a coffee maker but the rest of the house was eerily empty as if the surfaces were screaming "after 35 years of tobacco smoke, please paint me now".

I got started that night with spackle in the hallway upstairs on the water damaged ceiling and it was all uphill from there applying spackle, primer and paint to pretty much every surface that was not a floor. I was feeling high in about two days. It was lucky that I had help (in a big way) through a friend of family in the area because I would have been there painting until June otherwise. He was an amazing benefit to the speed in completing the job and even though I was the one to prime and paint about 800 linear feet of trim, he was the one to prime and paint almost every ceiling and many walls in the house. We had a blast and a lot of laughs. Eleven fourteen hour days later I was once again packing up the car to head home feeling like I was suffering from withdrawals without being able to spend even a second writing the whole time I was there. The return leg of driving was all me so Oreo kept me company on shuffle until Jersey when I decided it was time to stay awake by singing so Mraz was all over the speakers until I could get coffee in Connecticut. Here are a few key before and after shots for everyone to enjoy!

First Floor Bath

Shadowbox & wall paper removal

First Floor BR

Hallway ceiling

Matt picked up our keys on Friday so I met him at our new apartment after the drive back and we hugged for about ten minutes. It was nice to rest my cheek on his and I absorbed that moment as deep as I could to gather the strength for the final push of my two weeks of insanity. We stayed over my Mom's Friday night and on Saturday drove the couple hours out to the house in Western MA to pick up the last of the furniture there. After dropping that back at my Mom's we hit our storage unit on the south shore to pick up the items we have not seen in the six months we have been living at the furnished beach cottage. Sunday was the big move in day and we had help from Auntie, Uncle, S & B which was more than we had ever hoped or expected and not only did they all help carry boxes and random furniture they brought food and a camera to commemorate the day. Everyone peeled off here and there and Matt and I fell onto our mattress at about 11:00 last night after getting about half our new place set up.

I think I must have temporarily died last night because I slept through the night for the first time in a month and this morning actually feel as if I rested. My real life will resume tomorrow but for now I plan to do nothing but look at those boxes and hope they unpack themselves while I surf the web all day.

We Irish Lasses Call Today Amateur Day

When my sister and I were kids we loved to wake up on St. Patrick's Day morning because the Leprechauns would always come to our house the night before and turn the milk green. We had a ball drinking it on our cereal and it never occured to us then that green milk is not always a good thing. I will admit to being an amateur in far more areas than an expert, but growing up Irish means that there are certain inherant areas of expertise that come with the territory.

Talking. And talking, and talking, and talking. Trust me, we do not have to be drinking to be blabber mouths as the old cliche may have some believing. Just get us started on a subject and watch us go on forever. Most of the time we do not really care if the other person involved walks away while we are completing our thought, even if it takes a few hours. To really get me going, bring up why I think people over sixty five should have to take a driving road test every two years until age seventy when it moves to every year. Or perhaps the fact that music is censored on FM radio. All of you already know how I feel about Santa's Reindeer. Pretty much anything in between will do as well.

Passion. For good or bad it runs deep. This emotion can easily be turned to guilt, loyalty or love but in the end it is all just a fierceness buried so deep that it is almost impossible to control.

Story telling. We will do it with such a straight face and dead pan delivery it will be tough to tell if all the talking is just a bunch of BS. The fish really was this big.

Wit and timing. Go ahead, test me.

Tonight I will not be going out to take part in the festivities because I do not need the practice. Besides, my body is telling me I need sleep far more than a drink so two aspirin and a big bottle of water is how I will celebrate today.

I will leave you tonight with my favorite Irish quote:

May those who love us, love us; and those who don't love us may God turn their hearts; and if he can't turn their hearts may he turn their ankles so we will know them by the limping.

All My Brushes are Packed

When I am faced with a very long journey that I have to take on my own I try to remember two of my favorite gals on TV that always made being independent look so fun, Laverne & Shirley. I am not exactly moving into my own place and getting a job down at the bottling plant but there is an eight hour drive involved and two weeks where I am the only one in charge of what gets done and what does not. I love to travel so this will be an adventure just like skipping down the street.

Laverne was always funny but Shirley really just seemed to have it all together through her chaos. She was independent and responsible and that was the perfect role model to follow. Of course I was three when the show first aired so perhaps it was all in my head but that is what I really got from their antics each week.

Give us any chance, we’ll take it.
Give us any rule, we’ll break it.
We’re gonna make our dreams come true.
Doin’ it our way.

Nothin’s gonna turn us back now.
Straight ahead and on the track now.
We’re gonna make our dreams come true.
Doin’ it our way.

There is nothing we won’t try,
Never heard the word impossible.
This time there’s no stopping us.
We’re gonna do it.

On your mark, get set, and go now,
Got a dream and we just know now,
We’re gonna make our dream come true.
And we’ll do it our way, yes our way.
Make all our dreams come true,
And do it our way, yes our way,
Make all our dreams come true
For me and you.

I will channel a little bit of that while I complete the interior of my client’s house in Maryland. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Schlemeel, schlemazel, hasenfeffer incorporated. I am skipping off to enjoy two weeks of sixty degrees and lots of paint fumes in the almost south so see ya’ll in a couple weeks.

A New Season Is Emerging

Winter is winding down here as the day time high temperature does not tend to fall below forty. Although forty is not exactly pleasant it does signify spring since technically it is above freezing, but try to tell that to my fingers. Surviving a New England winter with all your digits intact is a marvelous feat to achieve and I can proudly say that I made it another year with the original twenty. Birds come out to sing and sunrise comes earlier with our newly adopted, but not yet used to, “spring forward”. The cold and raw of winter is just one of two seasons here in New England and as of this week I noticed the second has begun to bloom – road construction.

Now that the snow is almost melted and gone there are suddenly bursts of orange and white at every turn. The bright shade is enough to take notice of; it is hard not to since lovely signs, cones, barrels and neon billboards containing nothing more than arrows force us to redefine our morning commute route. The exciting part is they might end up anywhere at any time and the spontaneity of it all is half the fun. Since worksites can shift daily the drive taken yesterday that took twenty minutes may be well over an hour today. I will no longer mind the delay however as a new member of our family is synching with birth even as I type.

Fluffy, sadly, had the disease known as the white screen of death, although the Apple store guy admitted he had never heard it called that before it was not a sad Mac so I felt that was the next best description. Fluffy lost its battle with joint compound dust and glaze and even though it can never truly be replaced, I decided today to adopt a new track killer called Oreo. The most beautiful thing of all is that Fluffy was only fourteen months old so Apple just became my new best friend because they honored the warranty even though they did not have to and sent me home with Oreo free of charge. That is how the universe pays back in a big way! You rock my world Apple! Here is a picture of Oreo I took during birth. Maybe I am biased because its mine and all but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that is cuter.

Another way I am discovering that the universe pays back is through sheer luck. If there had not been road construction on the way home from Apple I may have arrived too early to see this beautiful sight.

I am quickly discovering that a smile, good attitude and some timing really makes the day a whole lot smoother. Well, that and an alternate route.

The Difference Between Genius and Insane Is What You Do With the Pen

The birds are out singing their song this morning as a perfect compliment to the shining sun on a day I have off from the laborious side of my job. This past week, as most lately, was a complete whirlwind of work, family, friends and lots of tunes in the car. Sadly my iPod died so it was back to CD and satellite radio listening. Before I leave on my out of town trip, replacing the iPod will be a necessary expense; messing around with CD changes for eight hours is not my idea of safe driving.

After sending the contract for a fairly large painting job that I will be completing in Maryland at the end of March, I wrapped up two other jobs this week. These jobs were vastly different but both a lot of fun to complete and one of my clients even snapped a photo of me on the ladder working on her glaze. Here is a nice shot of my backside for you to enjoy.

This week we signed a lease to move again so as of April first I will be living back in my hometown. Try as I did to find an apartment in any other town, the location for Matt to take the train to work and my proximity to clients had to win out in the end. A friend of mine once said to me that she ran out of white out and pages in her address book for all of my moves and finally just started writing them on post-it notes. I suppose I will always be a gypsy soul. Although I keep changing my address the bill collectors always seem to find me. Funny how that happens, as if accounts receivable departments all over the world have super human mutant powers for tracking like hawks in the air spotting a mouse hundreds of yards below.

Another thing that officially happened this week was my all time favorite quarterback, a man who never played the game for the money and someone who truly embodies what it means to enjoy what you do for a living, Brett Favre, retired from his position as quarterback for the Green Bay Packers. I grew up in New England and with that comes a certain level of love for the sports teams here so I would be lying to say that there is not some affection in my heart for the Patriots, but for the past sixteen years I have pushed that to the back burner and allowed my love for the Packers to bloom. Sundays for Packer fans will never be the same; it will be strange to watch those games without Favre after so many amazing seasons with him at the helm. “I’m not gonna sit here like other players maybe have said in the past & that I won’t miss it, because I will.” We will miss you too Brett Favre.

Since coming back from Maryland I feel like it has been non stop action around this place so now that my client calls are done I fully intend to take a breather and walk on the beach that I have not seen in at least a month. It will be great to get some fresh, salty air into my lungs and now that it is above twenty degrees and not snowing I might even enjoy the walk.