Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Putnam and Painting

Tonight I had dinner with Trish and Peggy for the purpose of discussing Dr. Putnam's challenge to us to reinvent how we connect. It was a very interesting evening, with many thoughts flowing back and forth. I had also invited Debbie and Carlota because they were both at the speech too, but they had other commitments. Hopefully they'll be able to come at another time.

It's so very easy to go back to the idea of wanting to change how society is. I think that's unlikely to happen. As Putnam challenged us to do, we must look for a new approach.

We came up with a couple of ideas - more looseness in organization of groups and new approaches including making things together as an activity. We are contemplating if we can incorporate that into our NewComers Group.

I'm sure I'll be up for hours as my brain is in overdrive now, mulling all this over.

Tomorrow I have my United Way presentation. I would *greatly* appreciate your good thoughts for me as I try to communicate what my organization does for the community. I feel very inadequate to tell its story. We are limited, of course, by considerable confidentiality concerns.

I have stripped more wallpaper today - I woke up very early and decided that was a good way to start the day - before I took a shower. I'm getting close to the end of that project - I have only a little bit of the walls left, but they're in an area with lots of nooks and crannies so it will take a bit of work.

If you're going to strip wallpaper, assemble every tool on the market. At various times, you will swear any particular one is the key to making it easier. Basically, to sum up, it's a bitch. There's nothing else that can be said about the whole job. At one time I thought I wanted wallpaper. Let me tell you, I'm *way* over that. I may paint a design on the wall, but I doubt I'll ever hang any wallpaper. And I'll think twice about buying a place that has a lot of it. The house would have to be MAJOR cool.

I'm having company this weekend so I needed to get the paper bits off the floor today because that's the room Mark sleeps in. At the moment the bed he sleeps in is in pieces in my bedroom, which is next door, but it won't take long to put it back in there. And, it was good incentive to get more wallpaper stripped in there. I still have some nail holes to fill - 100 years worth of nail holes is a lot. When I took off the old wallpaper I could see multiple generations of nail holes that they hadn't patched because the wallpaper was going to cover them up anyway.

But, thank you to the former owners, who stripped the previous wallpaper before putting this up. Thank you Thank you Thank you. This was probably from the 40s and I can see at least two generations of painting on the woodwork, as well as the varnish, so this must be at least its third incarnation of wallpaper. Thank goodness the stripped off the old stuff before putting this on. And, blissfully, it's the old stuff put up with wheat paste, probably - which seems far easier to deal with than the newer stuff.

I went this evening before dinner and bought some of the paint - the base color. It's a Porter Paint color called "sweet rice." I chose the Porter Paint in a high hiding formula because the stuff is just incredible in its ability to cover and I really don't want to prime the walls. I hate priming - seems like a complete waste of time to me. I used this paint in my office in a sage color. This is just a warm beige. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do but I think sponge two other colors on top of this - maybe a creamed coffee color and a coopery-bronze color. We'll see how it goes.

I want to experiment with some colors in the studio and see what I like best. I'm fortunate to have a guy, Steve, who mixes paint at the local Star store, who is a true artist and can match any color you bring him in any form. He worked for an independent company and when they were bought out the local Star store was smart enough to ask him to run the paint store, and created a separate entrance for the paint area, so his years of loyal customers would follow him. Of course, we all have. I have yet to run into anyone in town who works on their house a lot who doesn't know Steve. I've taken in everything from a photo to embroidery floss and had him match the color.

I'm not sure I'll start painting tonight but I might. I think I'll be awake for many hours yet thinking about the conversation regarding Putnam's book so I might as well be doing something else at the same time.