Monday, while at a local lumber yard getting what I need to refit my back hallway, I got a call from Tyler.
Xena, our warrior princess, has been named Jr. Royalty for the local high school's HomeComing festivities!!
She was going to be in the King and Queen crowning ceremony that afternoon!
I had two hours to get out to their place and join them in the stands.
Megan's mom is in town, so both Xena's grand mothers would get to see her in her new crown! The good news, if I haven't posted about it yet is that Ty and Megan are expecting baby #3, which will be our grandchild #5. The bad news is that Megan suffers from hyperemisis gravid arum, a condition that makes normal morning sickness, (which, in it's mildest form, makes a stomach bug feel like a walk in the park) and ramps it up to lethal proportions. I'm pretty sure the name means "vomit to death". I'm really glad her Mom is here to take care of her.
I did the best I could back in '13 when she went through it with Babalouie but there's no substitute for one's own Mom.
Despite some construction (of course) on the road, I managed to get to the house in time to make the trek to the high school with Ty and Peg. The Coronation Ceremony was fun, noisy and fairly short. It was all very exciting!
Tuesday, three of my kids, along with their cousin Meg, hopped a flight to Paris. They all had tickets to see Jimmy Buffett's annual Paris nightclub show on Friday night, which not coincidentally, is Zack's birthday.
All my kids were raised as conservative Republicans and Parakeets. They may not have all remained conservative but they did all bloom into full grown Parrotheads! Zack was well aware of Buffet's annual Autumn show in Paris. He knew that Parrotheads from all over the world made the trip to see Buffett in such a small, intimate venue. About fifteen months ago, Zack bought two tickets to the show on his birthday, then called his sister Katie and said "I got you a ticket to the show but you gotta buy your own plane ticket."
In the ensuing months, their sister Josie decided to join them. They found her a ticket online. In the last couple of weeks, Meg was added to the team. She found a ticket to the show, too.
So Tuesday, I piled them and all their luggage into my van (minivans are the BEST) and took them to the airport.
They're staying at my cousin Kevin's place, where I stayed back in '12 with my sisters and parents. Its a wonderful apartment in the 5th arrondissement, close to the Luxembourg Gardens and the Sorbonne. It's a short walk to the Seine and the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
Kevin doesn't live in Paris and the instructions on how and where to pick up the key, at a neighborhood bar were hilarious. When I passed them on to Zack, he looked at me and said "Is Kevin really a spy?"
"The white owl is in the seventh moon."
"Pater says the coffee is luke warm."
"Hayek Janisek sent me."
"Here's the key."
They should be having the time of their lives!
Wednesday, my plan had been to get a bit farther in my repaint-the-kitchen project.
I'd gotten two coats of paint on the back hall. I went with 'watery' by Sherwin Williams.
We bought this house in 1992. At the time, the kitchen was made up of two parts; an eating area and a dark, narrow galley style work space with orange wood cabinets and wainscoting, a drop down ceiling with fluorescent lights and an orange vinyl floor. The only sop to decorating that had happened post Vietnam War was the wall paper; a gray back ground covered in tiny mallards with a duckstamp style border. Very Reagan era.
Ugly as a wart on Tip O'Neill's butt.
When we redid the kitchen in '98, we tore down the dropped ceiling, turned the galley into an island and opened the room up. We painted all the orange wood white, put in a white vinyl floor and ripped down all the wall paper. We didn't want to have to put up new wallboard and the walls under the paper wasn't pristine, so we did a faux finish on the walls with two shades of aqua and teal for a parchment like look of caribbean blue.
I have loved it for twenty years.
But when we recently had the (horrible; don't ever put a white floor in your kitchen!) floors redone in a wonderful drift wood colored floating vinyl plank, the new floors made it glaringly obvious that the walls hadn't been painted in years. It was time for a touch up. Not only that, but when the floors went in, we removed the wainscoting and a closet from the back hall and had a lot of damaged trim replaced, so the room had to be started over.
I had planned on recreating the faux effect but ran into some roadblocks. First of all, that style is completely passe. I was easily able to match the base aqua; 'Watery' by Sherman Williams. It's a bit more muted and sophisticated looking than the original base color but it's close enough and completely scrumtious. But you can't even buy colored glazes anymore. The guy at Hirsjhfield's laughed when I asked. He did sell me a gallon of Ralph Lauren clear glaze for $11.00 just to get it off his shelf. I figured I'd tint it myself, having down that sort of thing many times before.
So Wednesday, I tinted some glaze and put it on one of the back hall walls. I stepped back, took a look...
and realized I hated it.
Not only was it not quite like the old glaze but the look itself just seemed...stupid. The two coats of 'watery' already on the walls was so deep and gorgeous that it made the kitchen, which I hadn't touched yet, just look grubby. I stood in the doorway, looking at the two versions of walls. I could mix up a new glaze that was closer to the color I wanted, spend about nine hours putting the faux finish on the walls...
...or I could just paint it all 'watery' and call it a day.
A beautiful, rich, up to the minute design-wise day.
It really wasn't a tough call.
So instead of spending the afternoon upstairs working, I spent it on a ladder in the kitchen, putting the first coat over the old finish.
Thursday, I spent the afternoon at Mom and Dad's, along with my sister, Katie. We baked cookies, went for a walk and rehung some of their artwork. As the parents of several artists, they have a vast collection of artwork and they've downsized the amount of wall space to be covered. We rearranged a couple of walls and took advantage of lots of space that hadn't been covered. We only tackled the kitchen and living room; there are two bathrooms, a bedroom and the office still to be done. The crew from Rose's Daughters did a wonderful job but getting all Mom's stuff on the wall requires far more time than just moving day.
That was two days in a row that I spent most of my time up on a ladder.
Friday is painting day. This week, I had a break through of sorts: I used a lot more paint than I have before, which is good and I managed to get some really rich deep darks, which is very good. Plus, it was a blast, as usual.
Oh, and nearly every day this week, Jay and I walked around the lake. Because, why wouldn't we?