Blue-Arsed Flies

It's always struck me as a strange saying, "running around like a blue-arsed fly" for the simple fact that MOST flies are always busy zipping around doing stuff. Yet the blue-arsed variety gets the fame, riches and bitches.

Very 0dd.

But I digress to the point, this week (and it ain't over yet!) has been manic and busy and full of stupid stuff that has drained me to the point of being dead. I am dead today. No flowers please.

The biggest ouchkabibble has been caused by yesterdays shenanigans, being that for the last couple of weeks, we've wanted to redecorate the living room. Earlier this week, we got around to buying the stuff to do it, and once the final child was thrown out the front door, I got cracking. I figured, the sooner I start, the sooner I'm done.

I should add, I nearly started in the ball rolling in the early hours of the morning, when, laying in the dark not sleeping, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The only reason I didn't was because dragging furniture makes a noise, and I didn't want to disturb anyone.

So 8am start it was. Furniture dragged out the way, sweeping, washing walls, picking remnants of paper off the wall, and slapping up paint. There has been so many years of abuse on these walls, with so many colours UNDER colours UNDER paper, that in total, there were three different colours and a patch of raw plaster to paint over.

Even finish? Not on your nelly. So it was two coats of white ALL over to start with, followed by three/four coats of Magnolia...

And here I digress. For many moons, I have been under the impression Magnolia was actually a sort of yellowy/orangey sort of colour. While slapping it up on the walls, I was looking thinking "Shit, what is going on with my eyes" Bare in mind, I was covering white paint, all I could see was this very light coffee/latte type colour. "Are you sure this is magnolia?" I asked Kellie. "Yes, it's definitely magnolia" she tells me. A few minutes later, I've lost all sense of colour and ask her to look at it. She repeats her "Yes it's fine" with the exasperation of a parent telling her child the same thing over and over.

"But it's sort of greyee/brownee/coffeeee/creamee" I whine.
"That's what magnolia is knobhead..." she replies.

Well, I've never been so insulted. OK, I have. Daily. By most of you lot in fact. However, being colour-blind - and some of you readers are colour-blind so hopefully you'll get this too - I find that if I stare at colours too long, especially when decorating so the colour is up-close and I'm concentrating on not leaving streaks - I lose all sense of colour. I can't process what I am looking at, I can't work out what is what if the colours are fairly close in shade/hue or whatever.

But I digress. Aside from being a knobhead, I'm making one holy hell of a mess. After painting just ONE wall - just one ten foot section of wall - I was splattered, smeared and smooshed in paint. Hair, arms, hands, body, shorts, legs and feet. Oh, and UNDER my feet. I don't know how I manage it, but I think it's a skill and not a flaw.

Kellie was very impressed. At least, that's how I interpreted her look.

Interestingly, not long after starting, the paint fumes took over. I was CERTAIN they smelled like cheap tequila. Hey, there are worse things they could smell of, like paint, for example. But yes, I was sure it smelled like Tequila. Kellie, however, decided it tasted like... Well, I don't know how to spell it, but *sound of someone trying to puke*

No, she didn't like it much.

But, with paint fumes comes craziness. With me attempting to take a photo of my paint-splattered self, Kellie tried to disrupt the photo. First with a slice of toast (I don't know... I really don't), then with a cat (who, it turns out, just legged it from her) and then, interestingly, with herself.  Now, I'm not sure if she pulled an "interesting" face in order to stop me posting the photo, but honestly... Did she think my train of thought would be "I know, Dan's trying to photograph his leg to show people he's a knobhead that can't keep paint on a paint-pad, so I will pull a silly face because SURELY he wouldn't post that!"

Interesting...

Just ONE wall later...
 If you look closely, top left, you can see where she's realised just too late who I am, and what an asshat I can be at times. Usually, I would say "Clicky to Embiggen" but in this case, I've done the embiggening JUST FOR YOU!

In a "That's What She Said" moment, she clearly didn't pull out in time. Bless.

So, we're in a room, painting everything including me, the colours aren't making sense, the fumes are making one of us think "Tequila!" and Mexican Hat Dancing, while the other is making retching noises.

Oh, and the cats are smeared in emulsion too, just for good measure.

ALL DAY. That's how long it took. From starting at 8am, pausing for a slice of toast around ten, then plugging on till 3pm, we sat down to eat lunch just after half three. Everything was back in it's place, paint brushes and pads and trays were washed, and all was tidy. We sat to eat, and the bloody kids started arriving.

After getting kids and stuff sorted and everything else, we didn't get to shower till gone seven, and didn't get to flop out on the sofa till half eight. We were fragged. Properly, full on, ouchie. It didn't even occur to us to eat till ten, and by that time, it was literally "click click click Dominos pizza on the way"

 I knew today was going to be rough when, at 4am, I woke up for no reason, and, on reaching for my phone (because I was actually awake) I could barely reach it. My body was working on the Emergency Shutdown procedure and nothing was functional. It took me ten minutes to get out the bed just to go pee. Lucky for me I didn't need to rush and puke or anything because in that case, I would have been on the floor in front of me.

Classy, I ain't.

It's quite depressing, feeling like this. I have painted a grand total of two walls, one of which is ten feet long, the other twelve. I was ready to fall over by about one yesterday afternoon, but didn't want to leave the job half-arsed and make Kellie finish it, so I plugged on with it. I HATE it. Properly, properly hate it. Today, as you can probably tell, I am all over the place. I can't focus, I can't think straight, I'm knackered, I'm in proper agony, I'm paranoid, I can't even form sentences properly. You should see this post - every three or four words are mis-typed. Even TYPING is causing discomfort.

And the sad part is, this is WITH painkillers in my system. I am loaded up on Co-Codamol and Lyrica. If I weren't deathly allergic to Ibuprofen, I'd knock some of those back too. In two weeks, my Lyrica doubles up again, so in the six weeks I've been on them, I will have gone from 25mg once a day, to 100mg twice a day.

Ho hum, I suppose. Just got to keep increasing it to the point it starts doing something. Fingers crossed that "something" is "pain relief" and that it starts sooner rather than later :D

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2 Responses to “Blue-Arsed Flies”

Adullamite said...

I sympathise. I have just done a little painting and understand!

Em's way said...

You have my deepest sympathies, have the same issues, just over an hour shopping in town and I can barely walk :( I mean literally just over an hour and I get helped to the cab rank by a security guard cos I can't fricking get there alone!! Its shit shit shit . So for once, no pisstaking just a gentle huggle and loadsa love xxxx