Well That’s About As Natural As A Cheeto
Yesterday The Boy Child managed to knock a full bowl of pasta sauce off the table and onto the floor.
I cannot even describe what this looked like and of all the things I take pictures of, I can’t believe I didn’t even snap one of this. Actually, I guess I can believe it, seeing as how I was using every ounce of my willpower to retain my sweet mommy voice and not let out the voice that was actually screaming in my head.
She sounded like a real bitch.
But anyway, imagine dropping a bomb in a tomato patch.
That’s pretty much exactly what it looked like.
Sauce was at least 7ft in every direction. It was not only dripping from the cabinets, but also from The Girl Child’s face.
She was not pleased.
There was a thick coating of it on the bathroom door, more sauce on the floor than I would have even guessed was in the bowl, and so much on the underside of a chair that they only feasible method of cleaning it up was to put the entire chair in the sink.
There was also sauce on the ceiling, but not a drop on The Boy Child.
Go figure.
Because of regular incidences like this, I feed the kids outside whenever I can, where I don’t have to clean up as much!
A few years ago I even went so far as to make a nice space for them in (what’s left of) our garage, because you know, they aren’t animals even though they eat like them.
But because I am lazy it’s really inconvenient to lug everything down two flights of stairs to the garage (thank you very much 3.5 story townhouse), when meal time rolls around I find myself repeatedly shoving guiding the kids out onto the balcony that adjoins our kitchen.
Thankfully the kids love to play out there anyway, so I don’t feel too guilty about it, or at least I’ve convinced myself that I have nothing to feel guilty about.
But what I have felt guilty about is the fact that the wood floor has DESPERATELY needed to be sealed for some time now. Last year towards the end of the warm weather, The Boy Child got a pretty nasty splinter in his foot and therefore I vowed to finally seal the wood before anyone went out there again.
So on Saturday I splurged on an $8 can of sealant and stained the balcony orange.
I wasn’t intending to stain it orange. I’m fairly unhappy with the BLATANT LIE that was on the front of the can, the one that said “All in one sealer and protectant, natural color” because the balcony is now about as naturally colored as a Cheeto.
I’m not an un-handy person, I can find my way around a hardware store better than most men and I have yet to meet a household project that I couldn’t tackle, but Saturday, Saturday I was lazy. That afternoon I thought about staining a piece of test wood first, and then I thought, “eh, it says natural color, what is the worst that could happen?”
Well let me tell you what the worst that can happen is; you might end up with an orange balcony.
As soon as I opened the can I was a bit taken aback by the color, but stain is tricky in that unlike paint it tends to dry much lighter because it’s not made to completely cover whatever you are staining.
Yet the moment the paintbrush hit the wood I thought “oh shit,” and because I was now in complete denial of what I had just done (and suffering from a bad case of what I call “man won’t ask for directions”), I had my next genius thought and it sounded exactly like this in my brain: “yes, yes it will most definitely dry lighter.”
Well, dry lighter it did not.
In fact, it dried BRIGHTER.
As my neighbor said when he leaned over his balcony to get a better look at mine, “wow. That’s uh… that’s rough.”
Yes, yes it is indeed,
Staining it was a bitch and a half because the wood was so dried out that painting it was what I would assume painting memory foam might be like. As soon as the brush would touch the wood I would hear a slurping sound as it was sucked directly into the core of the board.
Ok, maybe I didn’t actually hear any sounds, but in all reality there was no spreading the stain around. There were no brush strokes, no painting up and down, there was stamping. There was the repeated motion of putting the brush in and out of the can and stamping it down onto the wood where the stain would immediately be sucked out of the brush and into the board.
Two hours and three coats later my back was killing me and the balcony was orange. It’s also staying that way. Since I can’t really undo what I did, my only choice is to stain it darker, and thought about it I did.
I thought about it for about ten minutes until I went to get up off the couch and my back screamed “DON’T MOVE BITCH” and so for the first time all day, I listed to my instincts and thought “you know what Eden? Maybe it will grow on you.”
So yep, I’m just gonna be adaptable like that.
“How To Buy What You Love When You Can’t Afford It”
Photo Credit
Frustrated Face
Sauce…on the ceiling? Your boy child has some serious skills.We have a little deck/porch off the back of our second story. But getting there from the kitchen is a pain because it's through a bedroom and then through a semi-walk through closet that's half-full of stuff. It's an awesome deck, but climbing a spiral stair case, trudging through the guest bedroom, and then climbing over closet stuff while carrying food and beverages? Nope. Not gonna happen.Look at it this way. Your deck is now totally ready for Halloween! 😀
He has many skills that I wish he didn’t have lol!!
Geez, that’s quite the trudge out to the deck, why on earth is it like that? That’s kind of why we don’t eat in the garage space that often. From the kitchen you have to go through the dining and living room, down the stairs to the entry way, down the stairs to the playroom, through the playroom, and out the garage (imagine bringing groceries in, it SUCKS).
Yay, now I get to be the crazy halloween lady in July!
Maybe it will fade in the sun?One time, I was blending cherries, jalapenos, and vinegar in my blender when the lid came off………….Yeah, no fun. Hopefully he'll grow out of it!!
I can only hope it does lol!! Oh gosh, that SUCKS with the blender. What on EARTH were you making!? Remember that powdered drink mix I showed you all in the “to answer all your burning questions” post a few weeks back? Red as day? I once shook it without remembering to close the top. It was as if I had effectively picked up the cup and meerly thrown it across the room.
I just stood there with my mouth hangning open.
You sometimes describe yourself as “annoying” or bitchy and I wonder if you are often in real life. Or would be all the time if you had never been abused. Blessings in disguise.
Uh… ?
Hey, I guess anything is possible! Bitch is actually a term of endearment between my friends and I. We use it all the time for everything. Annoying? Maybe! I guess I wouldn’t really be the best judge of how annoying I am, seeing as how the most annoying people are the one’s who don’t know they are annoying. I would hope that since I have a lot of friends that would be a good sign, but hey, ya never know!
I'm kind of surprised you had to deal with sealing your deck at all. Most people in townhouses here have association dues to deal with that (a blessing and a curse) . My sister calls them when anything has to be done with her deck because it's part of “exterior maintenance” and therefore not her expense.
THANK YOU. Isn’t that ridiculous? I often wonder if whatever board got together to decide what would be covered by the association, was drinking at the same time, because it makes no sense. Our association covers the balcony railing, but not the floor boards. They cover my front door, but not my windows. They cover my roof and siding, but not the light fixture (and you aren’t allowed to change or replace it). So strange.
THANK YOU. Isn’t that ridiculous? I often wonder if whatever board got together to decide what would be covered by the association, was drinking at the same time, because it makes no sense. Our association covers the balcony railing, but not the floor boards. They cover my front door, but not my windows. They cover my roof and siding, but not the light fixture (and you aren’t allowed to change or replace it). So strange.
We're not exactly sure. The house was built in 1903 and we think what is now the 2nd floor bathroom, TINY bedroom, and walk-through closet was at one point just two bedrooms with the deck off one of them. But then the whole indoor plumbing thing got to be a big deal and they put a bathroom on the 2nd floor, eliminated the 1st floor bathroom and expanded the kitchen to where that bathroom originally was.But plumbing being what it is, they were limited in where they could put the 2nd floor bathroom. So now there's a tiny bedroom (big enough for maybe a full size bed and a small dresser, but that's about it) that has a walk-through closet onto the deck.But this is all speculation. We bought the house in 2006 so we have no idea what happened during the 103 years we didn't own it.
That’s crazy. I LOVE old houses. So do you not have any bathroom on the first floor now?
I did that twice in one week. Once with salsa and once with my homemade hot sauce. It was so not fun, let me tell you, even though it wasn't quite such a large amount.
Ha!
I do the dropped food thing more than my kids do.About once a month, I will drop something out of the refrigerator that will explode so spectacularly that I will sort of wish I had filmed the whole thing to see how it happened. I wish I could blame that sort of thing on the kids, but they're old enough now that they understand cause and effect.
Once when I was still living with my parents I got really mad at my mom and slammed a ketchup bottle down on the counter as hard as I could. It EXPLODED out the top like a bomb. I spent hours wiping the ceiling down and for years we would still find bits of ketchup stuck to the cabinets lol
Cherry jalapeno jelly. :DOh, yeah–the lid loose thing…..I did that once with ketchup. At a restaurant. I was SO embarrassed.My mom once did that with a wide-mouthed glass jar full of milk…….Onto my little brother. He was not happy!!!
“red as day?” What the heck was I typing!? I think I must have meant to say “red as blood.” Anyways… yay for exploding food!
We cut the kitchen by 1/3 and added a bathroom down there. The kitchen was the entire width of the house – big enough to have an eat-in table and then some – so it was easy. We still have a small table by one window that can comfortably fit 2, semi-comfortably fit 3.Old houses are great to look at and visit, but honestly I'm sick of living in one. It's just falling apart. The back deck needs to be replaced, the front porch is about to just completely fall of the front of the house, the living room (which is in the front) is sagging forward, so it'll probably get taken out when the front porch collapses. There are no closets on the entire first floor. Heating it is a PAIN because there's no insulation. The repairs it needs probably cost about as much as the house is worth.There's a huge restaurant/local brewery and a lot of retail shopping going up, plus 175 apartments and a few dozen townhomes within walking distance of our house. Supposed to all be completed by the end of summer. That's going to increase the value of the house quite a bit, so we're hoping to hold off until then and sell it some time in the fall.But it is pretty to look at! 😛
Yea that would be a lot of work!! Well, let me know if you need anything stained orange, I totally rock at it!! 😉
One day your house will be worth a couple million bc it will be in the middle of the shopping district lol.
Heh, well when we replace the back deck, we're going to need to do some sealing. You're hired!Not only will it be in the middle of all this shopping, but it's also on the historic registry! Which is both awesome and not awesome. Awesome because hey…HISTORIC HO– USE! Not awesome because being on the registry means you're extremely limited in what you can do to the exterior of the house.