You know, I’m beginning to draw parallels between painting the back rooms and parenthood. Yes, I know they are VERY different tasks, but think about it.

When you decide to paint the room, it’s a blank canvas. You have long conversations debating the merits of a bluish-green vs a greenish-blue. You look at the spectrum, you decide, and you bring the paint home. You can envision that greenish-blue room with the windows open on a summer day, the guest bed made with fresh sheets, a nightstand with a neat lamp on top. You can see the office area set up, the shelves stocked with the technical manuals and reference books, the bill paying area clean and neat, with a cup of pens on the corner. It’s all right there, in your head. And now you have the paint, so it’s almost done.

But it isn’t.

First, you have to move all the crap in the guest room to the sewing room, and you have to move the stuff that won’t move into the center of the room. You then have to strip the paper, well, the three layers of paper, before you can paint. You do this because you’ve read the books, you’ve seen the shows. You are going to do it The Right Way, and you will be proud of the finished product.

Doing it the Right Way is a bitch. You start getting big sheets, but then there’s the little bits around the woodwork that are stubborn. You end up spending two days scraping, wearing the same clothes, dirty and sweaty and smelly, and you wonder why you hated the flowered wallpaper so much? Why did we need the greenish-blue room, when it’s really only a lighter and bluer version of the wallpaper that was there? You’ve already started, though. The paint can is in this house, somewhere, waiting to be used and loved. The room is torn up. There is no going back.

SO you keep on plugging. You get paint flakes (probably lead-filled, the house IS 5o years old, you know) in your eyes and mouth and nose. And you’re wearing glasses and a facemask. When you rip back the facemask,gagging, to spit paintchips on the floor, you do it out of instinct, and then apologize to your husband. You remind each other, this is worth it. This is what we wanted, remember?

At some point, you get to tape off the woodwork. You get to prime. When you haven’t gotten that point yet, you hope that you get there soon, because you just bought a bed and it is being delivered in ten days. You have ten days to get everything done, which sounds feasible, but then you remember that at least 6 of those days are being used up for work. Four nights are gone because the conference isn’t local this time.

But then you peek in the sewing room, which is now filled with all the crap you felt you needed to move with you. It’s a mess, waiting for the office to be done. One wall is still chewed up, hanging beadboard won’t happen until a person can actually GET to that wall. But the other three? Are beautiful. That green makes you smile every single time. It was worth it.

It sucked getting there, it was hard, and dirty, and a pain in the ass. You had headaches and sore arms and your fingers were pruny and sliced up under the nails. But it was worth it.

So, we are at the spackle stage of one wall, and almost there for the other four. I am PRAYING that I will be able to prime and paint tomorrow. Because I know, I KNOW, it will be worth it in the end,

And the furniture guys have to put the bed SOMEWHERE next Saturday.