49) Practically Picasso

“FUCK!”

There was a flurry of commotion, a crashing, a metallic thud and more yelling…

“Oh you son of a fucking bitch… I swear to god! Are you fucking with me??? You have to be fucking with me…”

You thought about asking what was going on then decided better… Sometimes you were better off pretending that your acute sense of hearing wasn’t all that acute.

There was a brief silence before the mechanical hum of the paint sprayer kicked back on and then a few minutes later,

“You piece of fucking shit. You son of a… I can’t believe this shit! FUCK!”

You were glad you hadn’t asked. From the sound of it… the brand new paint sprayer wasn’t working. Mechanical issues or new user learning curve… either way… this was a circus tent you refused to step foot into.

Later on that day David told you that every few minutes the new paint sprayer would jam, sending thick globs of paint in all directions. Including… you found out… all over the newly painted basement floor and walls and one of your palms. Thanks to David’s general disposition that day, somehow the cat was blamed for the paint on the floors. Something, something, something… about him pissing on the drop cloths the other day…

Sometimes you could turn off your acute hearing altogether. This was one of those times.

David later determined that the paint sprayer’s unapologetic misfires were most likely equal parts new user learning curve and old paint thickness… he never absolved the cat of any wrongdoing… despite his work-boots being the only visible footprints on the newly painted floor.

“Everything I touched turned to shit…” David told you that evening. The two of you were enjoying your evening smoke before bed in the dark, warm, woodsy smell of his workshop.

“I get it… we all have those days… sounds like today was yours.”

“It was. Now the room looks like shit and I wasted a ton of paint.”

“Honestly I thought that you did a pretty good job.”

“It looks like shit.”

“Well I thought it looked good.”

David either ignored you or hadn’t even heard you… “There’s paint all over the floor and there were globs of paint everywhere… when I’d try to roll it out, the wall would crumble.”

“Honestly that room was in deplorable shape… the walls were crumbling and covered in some sort of weird mineral buildup… If we wanted a clean and perfect finish we would have had to of taken those walls down to the bare stone or put up new sheetrock… neither of which we wanted to do… I think all things considered… the room came out great.”

“Looks like shit…”

You didn’t say a word. The two of you sat in silence and finished your joints, you watched the glow of David’s glide towards his face before he stubbed it out in the little metal ashtray. You never even brought up that he had gotten a ton of paint all over the plants.

****************************************************************************

While he was willing to die on the hill of “terrible paint job,” you were thrilled with the work he had done. Sure there were size 11, white work boot prints all over the floor, and your green Royal Palm had several white ribs with paint-stiff fronds, and there were the hand prints all over the door and the door’s knob BUT… the creepy little room that had been in absolutely dire shape now looked a lot less like a SAW set and more like a decent storage room.

David could call it ‘shit’ all he wanted… you were taking the W on this one. It wasn’t even really that either one of you had really cared what this room looked like; it was that you needed it cleaned and covered in a mold / mildew resistant paint so that you could finally get some much needed storage space.

“We’re just putting shit in here… it doesn’t need to be perfect…” you had told David. Like you said, most of the room would probably be invisible once the myriad of boxes was brought in.

You’d be storing the kids’ old toys that they refused to part with… some of yours too… holiday decorations, seasonal clothing and more. David was taking care of step one in readying the room but step two was all you: get everything out of the sanctuary and into the former SAW set turned decent storage room.

Before that could happen though… you had some of your own painting to attend to.

A while back you had taken on a commission that you had agreed to without seeing the subject matter… and while it was a portrait and not out of your realm… you hadn’t anticipated the painting to have two subjects. Not that it should have mattered but your brain did that shitty thing where it convinced you that you could no longer paint and much like David’s paint spraying debacle… it was going to look like shit. It wasn’t until you had maybe three hours or so left on the painting that you decided that you could in fact paint and that you were actually really happy with the nearly finished portrait. Someday you hoped to get to the point that you could feel that way on the front half of a project.

Luckily you were fully in belief when it came to your paint mixing skills…

Last fall when you and Jackie had finished removing all of the old plaster, you had been left with gaping massive holes where old mortar had completely disintegrated. Terrified of the creepy millipeeds or even worse… gusts of -20 degree wind making its way into the space, you temporarily plugged the gaps with spray foam. The foam worked splendidly. Unfortunately though the spray foam was just as ugly as it was good at keeping out the weather and the bugs. Another unfortunate aspect of the foam was that temporary was feeling a lot more permanent when eight months later the foam was still visible in all its ugly yellowish, spongy looking glory.

Every day you’d walk by the gorgeous stonework peppered with the diabolical doings of a woman desperate not to freeze to death and you’d wince… “This is going to look so much nicer when this fucking foam is gone…” you had said to David on multiple occasions. Problem was that the correct mortar you needed for the job was only available a good 10+ hours away one direction… getting the correct mortar meant that you were going to have to rent a U-Haul (pay an ungodly amount in gas and mileage), load it to the brink with goods, then haul ass to get back to the church… which was problematic considering that you had three kids that were most definitely not able to stay home by themselves for a 24 hour time period.

So the foam stayed. Day after day. Week after week… ugly yellow foam.

When you were contacted though out of the blue by a steel sign company asking to send you a monogrammed sample of their product in exchange for a short video advertising said sign, you jumped at the opportunity. You were good at this sort of shit. You loved making and editing videos… until you had the sign in your hand and suddenly… just like painting… you convinced yourself that you had forgotten how to create and edit a video.

“The problem is…” you were doing your best to convince yourself why taking on a promotional video was a terrible idea… despite wanting to generate a sustainable income via social media, “that I don’t have a good place to hang this sign,” you had told David. “If we put it outside the paint needs to be scraped and repainted and I can’t get on a ladder (you left off the part about not wanting him to paint any focal points on the church)… so if I hang the pretty sign over an area needing work it’s just going to look stupid.”

David just shrugged, “You’ll figure something out…”

Which turned into you deciding that the sign would look best inside on the stone wall right by the dining table… only problem was that after David hung it for you, all you noticed was the spray foam. How were you going to make a video about a beautiful legacy decor piece hanging over yellow foam? That wasn’t exactly the look you were going for…

What you did remember though was that you were really good at color matching. You may have doubted your painting skills every time you picked up a brush, but color matching you could practically do blindfolded.

“I’m going to paint the foam!” You told David.

“Ok… go for it…”

And you did. You had grabbed your thrifted milk glass serving tray that held paint beautifully for mixing and your limited color palette of white, black, yellow, red and blue and you got to work. You mixed the large gobs of black and white, mostly white then expertly added yellow and red and toned it down with blue. The color matching was so spot on that when you finished painting all of the foam you and your family struggled to distinguish the painted foam from the original mortar.

“Wow Vaness… that came out amazing… you can’t even tell…”

“I know right? I’m almost kicking myself because when it comes time to fill everything in with the mortar, I don’t think that I’m going to be able to find all the foam again…”

“For real…”

The sign now looked great against the bare grey stone… not a trace of yellow in sight.

You still had to convince yourself though that you could muster up a good video and edit it… but at least the walls looked really fucking good.

The following day you got to work splicing video clips and sound and voice overs together to make a brand commercial that actually got you teared up. While you knew yourself and knew well enough to know that you would probably ‘magically forget how to make a great video,’ the next time another brand came calling… you were able to acknowledge that you had put together something pretty good.

So good in fact that the company wound up loving it and asked to use it on their end too.

Winning.

With your commission completed (the commissioner loved his portrait when he saw it… you guessed he never got the memo that you sucked at painting haha), and the walls looking amazing from your color matching expertise… and the brand video coming out pretty darn good if you did say so yourself… and you did… and David getting the storage room cleaned and painted it was finally time for you to tackle the sanctuary.

You had a deadline… clean it up before your friend got in on July 3rd… which just happened to be a week of a relentless heat dome with temperatures climbing into the mid 90s… You had a real knack for picking projects that paired dreadfully with the weather… especially in a space with no AC.

You loved having company… especially at the church… and not only because of getting to spend time with friends and family and how much you loved sharing your space… but also because company had a way of reigning in the ADHD. Company had a way of creating deadlines that you could actually adhere to.

Your kids were less than thrilled… the four of you spent seven hours in the grueling heat packing, unpacking, and moving boxes… by the time you had finished for the day everyone was dripping in sweat… you took two ice cold showers… but the sanctuary was finally starting to look nice again… and best off you were that much closer to being able to rent out the space…

Which considering all the money that had flown out of this place in the last year: was another big win in your book. Maybe you could finally start bringing a bit of green back in.

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