Finished Just This Minute!

Before I show you one of those Projects from Hell, let me show you what may be the most useful Home Crafting Tool on the planet:

Yeah: yoga blocks. If you look closely at these babies, you can see where I've taped them together and the tape has peeled parts of them away. You can see green paint where I've used them to hold things off the table while painting them. You cannot see where I've used them as a support for drilling holes. I have two sets of these, and while I've used them occasionally for actual yoga, I've used this pair a LOT for almost everything else. On sale, of course--I highly rec. nabbing a pair of these when you find them cheap.

OK. A Project from Hell. When we went to The Heaven That Is Ikea, where we didn't buy much but marveled at all the Stuff, I DID buy these little rubber Dog Butt Hooks. I think they're supposed to be mounted on your laundry room wall for dog leashes. I couldn't resist 1) the colors or 2) the idea of dog butts, which makes me snort whenever I even think it, much less actually say it. Dog butts. Hee.

(Note: I do not like the actual butts of actual dogs, having worked for a veterinarian and been present during the procedure to Express the Anal Glands, which made me heartily wish that I had died earlier that morning so as not to be there. Rubber dog butts are another matter entirely, however. Thank you, Jesus.)

OK. So I didn't want to just put a row of screws in the wall and hang these up, and I thought it would look cool to mount them on a piece of wood. I figured out how wide it would need to be, and hark! if The EGE didn't just happen to have some old-but-serviceable fence slats in Just That Size from his year-long Cat Thwarting Project. I got him to cut the corners off the other end, so they'd match, and then I sanded it to a fare-thee-well and applied several coats of gesso.

And then I started painting. At first, I was using interior latex because I had some already open, for that table I showed you (I did, didn't I?). But the coverage was practically nil, and so I switched to cheap acrylic paint. Many, many coats of it. And then, when I got ready to put in the screws, I realized that the green dog butt (hee.) looked like Shit. As green dog butts will, I suppose.

It didn't show up well against the green paint (duh), and it also didn't match--I mean, come on: one or the other, people! Not both. Surely.

But yes. So. The wood had to be purple or green or fuchsia or orange or hot pink, and none of those colors was going to work. The wall is purple. The dog butts (snort) are pinkish-fuchsia, orange, and green.

(what you're seeing here: the south wall of our living room, with that smidge of the orange (all the rest of the walls) walls to the west. the black-and-white-striped molding also goes all the way around the ceiling. that yellow, above, is the bottom of the moon light referenced below)

Sigh. Hence the polka dots. And that's how I came to understand why my tattooist bitched so ferociously when I had him tattoo circles on my arm. Circles are a pain in the butt.

(Whoa! It's a whole Butt Theme!)

Getting these circles painted and looking halfway decent (and "halfway" is really stretching it) was not only a pain, but it pissed me off royally. I hate it when I can't make things look the way I want them to. If I did it again (not bloody likely), I'd cut circles in clear contact paper and press that firmly to the wood and sponge dab the paint on (having learned long ago that brushing it on with a contact stencil is a recipe for a disaster of a whole nother kind).

So, much bitching later, here it is. I'm not happy with it, but I'm happy enough with it. Getting it on the wall this morning wasn't fun, either--I do not like drilling holes in walls, never mind the plentiful evidence to the contrary: the rows and rows of shelves attached to the walls out here, all done by me, thank you very much. It was scary this morning: I got it attached, and it wiggled, and when I messed with it, it came loose. I thought I'd missed the stud (how the hell THAT would happen, I have no clue--I'm excellent at finding studs, having experienced the horror that is having a cabinet full of stuff leap off the wall and crash onto the washing machine, crushing a clock underneath it and smacking its lips and growling, "Missed you this time, my sweet, but just wait!"

It was not a cabinet I had installed. It was here when we moved in and waited for several years to attack me. If it had fallen on any of us, it would have Done Damage. Hence, my care in Stud-Finding.

(Care in Stud-Finding. That's pretty snort-inducing, too.)

ANYWAY--so I had to go find some longer screws--you knew that was the problem. And it's mounted. And now I'm thinking I should have put it higher, but the moon light (also from Ikea--seems we bought more there than I thought we did. Huh.) is above it.

Am I going to move it? No way. Uh-uh. It's slightly crooked (I forgot to use the level. Sigh. See, I was saying the other night that when you have OCD and then improve, over the course of your life, and get so much better that it's hardly an issue any more? Is not always a good thing: several times in the last month we've left the house and left a candle burning, which, when I find it later, scares the crap out of me, as it should. And not only can I now mount stuff on the wall without using my level (and you know I have my very own, in addition to the various other House Levels, meaning the ones that are part of the House Tools), but I can see, afterwards, that's it's screwed--and skewed--and go, "Eh. Fuck it. I'm done." Healing may not always be A Good Thing. All these years I've told The EGE that, when you live with someone with OCD, you never have to worry about 1) food poisoning or 2) house fires. Now I'm thinking: more insurance.

What's next? Eating at buffets? Sharing needles with junkies? Walking barefoot at a rodeo? Aieeeeeeee!

I think not. I think a very-slightly-crooked Dog Butt Rack is about as far as I'm going anytime soon. So whaddaya think? Does "Dog Butt Rack" make you snort, too? I hope so--I'd hate to be the only one. . . .