Confessions of a toolbelt diva

I've been painting!! Can you see my smile from there? I'm giddy with delight... or would be were it not for the pain in my neck, back, shoulders, legs, arms... Ugh. I am by no means finished, but it's starting to look beautiful. Think walls of coffee ice cream with one wall that looks like pure milk chocolate. Yum. It was like painting with chocolate fondue. Had there not been a paint smell, I would have been so tempted to lick it! I had such a blast today. I was singing along with the radio while I painted. Even the Stephen Curtis Chapman song "Cinderella" didn't completely take me down. (The chorus says "So I will dance with Cinderella, while she is here in my arms 'cause I know something the prince never knew. Oh I will dance with Cinderella, I don't want to miss even one song, 'cause all too soon the clock will strike midnight and she'll be gone.") I sang along and thought about Ellie. I also remembered the day Ellie died. John and I promised her that we would be o.k. This was a good day for me. A day of being o.k. Ellie wanted to move into this house so much. Even the day before she died, she would talk about what it would be like to have a "normal" life again and how she wanted her room decorated. That has caused me some pain to know that she never got her wish. But I know that she would be so happy for us. I had the thought that maybe God could pull back the curtain of Heaven a little and let my girl have a peek at my paint choices. But then I thought that He would need to give her a second look once it's finished because I couldn't bear it for her to see it unfinished.

So a wonderful thing happened today. I found my cordless drill! I almost cried when I thought it had been sold in Florida. I love that crazy drill. It's perfect - lightweight with an easily removable chuck. I can be balanced at the top of the ladder and do a one-handed switch between the drill bit and the screwdriver. Anyway... I found it today and called John, all excited. His response? "Oh, good." Such enthusiasm. Maybe it's because he has the mack-daddy heavy duty upgraded drill (the reason I inherited my little treasure) and couldn't fully appreciate my joy. That's alright. I did my own little happy dance and continued painting.

Sometime later, John stopped in to check on my progress and we had a conversation that went something like this:

Me: Honey, would you mind if I hang the curtain rods while you are at work this week?
Him: Yes.
Me: Yes, I can or yes you mind? (Because one could hope that he misunderstood the question.)
Him: Yes, I mind. (Drat.)
Me: Oh. Really? You really want to do it yourself?
Him: Yes. Whenever you want - I'll do it. I want to find the studs.
Me: It really doesn't matter where the studs are. The rods will need to be hung in a certain place whether there's a stud there or not.
Him: I know. But I can use my new stud finder to figure out whether we need to use an anchor or not. (Ahhh. So now we have come to the root of the issue. It's his nice, new, fancy stud finder against my oh-so-perfect drill.)
Me: Well, I just drill a tiny hole where I want the screw to go. If there's wood there, I screw into it. If not, I use an anchor. (I have learned this the hard way. I have left behind a trail of gaping wounds in walls all over the state of Florida, that have been cleverly hidden by pictures or other decorations.)
Him: But I have a really cool stud finder. (Said with all of the wisdom and confidence of a man who knows his wife is not a perfectionist. Also a man who has probably stumbled accross a few of his wife's hidden wall "boo-boos".)

Score one for the stud finder.

That's o.k. I can guarantee you that someday John will return home to find that something in the house has been fixed or hung by me and my drill. I may even pay attention during the curtain rod installation so that I can use his stud finder too! I must find an excuse to don my tool belt. Oh yes, I have my own tool belt. (A very sweet and optimistic gift from the man to his non-perfectionist wife! A gift that said wife chooses to believe has nothing to do with husband's fear of missing or mangled tools in his own pristine tool belt.)

Progress reports will be forthcoming.