Stuff

Last Friday was a good day. Finally got all my round of appointments done so that I can now fill in enrolment information for my course. Only took three weeks and three appointments after being accepted into the course. Not too bad for the government system - no actual sarcasm used in the making of the previous sentence. While I was in the third and last meeting, I received a call telling me I had been accepted into private dance tuition. Yippee!! Now, by the time my course starts I hope not to look like a broken chicken on the dance floor. Was so happy on Friday I needed an afternoon nap to recover from all of the excitement...

Now things are official, I am officially on a deadline and things are not looking good for these stripes. I need to have this room ready by the end of the month so that I can spend August preparing some stock for the business. I would like proof that I really can do the things that I believe I can do. I shall call this wholistic belief.

Just checked the calendar - this gives me until next saturday! I shall not panic. I shall not panic. Upon William's recommendation, I bought a quartz heater which shall help paint dry more quickly. Unfortunately, the instructions for the heater say not to actually go any closer to it than one metre. This may hinder the drying process just a little bit but it did heat the floor up a lot. This was a nice thing for a single girl to discover while at home on a Saturday night - my new heater warms floor boards very well...

William and Maree were over for a dinner party/sleepover on Friday night and they gave some helpful suggestions about stripe alternatives so that I don't go crazy trying to get these done. However, most of the suggestions were unhelpful and unprintable. You truly know that you will never grow up when the last thing you hear while falling asleep are two legal aged adults in the next room saying to each other, 'You're an idiot!' - 'I know you are but what am I?' Saturday we went house hunting as they are moving in together. William keeps telling us he is a good cook. I shall be spending the rest of today having delicious visions of future dinner parties while staring at a white floor and painting it even whiter...

Strisis - Stripe Crisis!

While I can barely express my unmitigated joy at being accepted into the business course I was interviewed for - well I can actually - Oh boy! I have unmitigated joy at being accepted... I have just spent the afternoon painting phoebe in practise for the stripes and I have found out that the really expensive painters tape I bought to mark out sections for painting different colours does not do its job in preventing paint bleeding. How then, am I going to get these stripes on the wall?

My brother is coming over later to help me measure them out and I was just on the phone to him in despair over this situation. He is the expert in all of these things and his response was to use masking tape, "but it might rip the paint off though". As if I'm going to allow that to happen with all of the blood, sweat and carnage that has gone into the room so far.

I have an emergency plan that I may need to engage. I have long been interested in getting an overhead projector to beam images onto the wall and then to paint them in. I have even created a series of chakra related images just for this purpose. Back when them room was going to heavy in pink and white I was wanting to complement this with a black and white wallpaper pattern. I was lucky enough to find some at the local reclaimed rubbish facility that only needed to be coloured black and I would have exactly that. After three weeks of colouring it in, I had completed about one and a half metres and then promptly forgot about using this as backing for shelves.

Anyways - the pattern on this wall paper would work enalarged to wall size and painted pink. But I want stripes...Or stripes painted around the pattern...Definately...At least...

Beautiful People!!

I was quite nervous conducting my Market Research last Friday. I had thought up some reasonable questions to ask people about my business idea. Marie, God bless her coughing socks, came with me to hold my coat and study stock in shops with incredible scrutiny while I prattled away to owners and managers about my idea for turning recycling into a viable business.

There was no real need to be nervous. Each person I spoke to was lovely, helpful and supportive. I left the day feeling blessed that I had met these people and while I am still petrified about where this may be going, I am essentially positive that I am at least heading in the right direction.

Enjoyed a sleep over at Maries' house that night complete with William and was feeling so happy I splurged and bought myself a pair of Elmo pjs to celebrate. Happy times! One more day of Market Research and tidying my application should do the trick. Interview on Tuesday. Hope the clothing faeries are on my side then.

Awwww Poor Phoebes!!

I've had one of those days where I couldn't achieve anything so now I'm just sore and my brain is mush with nothing to show for it.

William owns most of Season 1 - 4 of Friends - in the correct frame rate mind you. So Marie, William and I get together for 'best ofves' (?!) every so often. One memorable moment is the episode where Phoebe was getting things wrong and misunderstanding people. The others would sympathize with her naivete by saying "Poor Phoebes". When something unfortunate happened to one of the others, Phoebe also responded with "Poor Phoebes". She just thought that was what they said to each other. Very cute. So the three of us began using it with each other and it has leaked out. When a friend had a car accident last week, I used "Poor Phoebes" so much he has now named his car Phoebe. Because he was helping me paint just before the accident, I named my bench he was helping out with Phoebe in honor of his efforts and the poor car.

I have just been filling in an application form for a business course and have just reached the part where you need to create a questionaire for others to resond about how you are going to change the world with your brilliant idea. I had tried to apply for this course before but stumbled at this point. I wanted to use my design skills to assist older people with downsizing their furniture and creating specialist clothing. I visited rehabilitation facilities and nursing homes to see if I could ask staff, clients and their families about whether this idea was viable or not. Facility one was too busy too talk and could they call me next week (still waiting). Facility two told me they didn't have enough people for me to ask (only wanted ten people - and I could see more than that from where I was standing). Facility two sent me to facility three - a larger place with more people I could ask. When the liason person at facility three heard my idea and that I wanted to ask clients if I was able to provide a service for them - I WAS ESCORTED FROM THE PREMISES!!!

In trying to help some of the most vulnerable people in society I was kicked out of an elderly nursing home, hence the current block in my application form.

Poor Phoebes.

The continuing adventures of Shed Girl!

There hadn't been much happening at Rumble Castle. JD completed a second white undercoat. I helped out a bit but found it easier to attend to the furniture that will be inhabiting the room (My idea to cover up the dark brown desk set will be to DIE for). During these few days of white upon white upon... JD came outside to look for me for some reason. He had been calling me for a while and found me in the garage (workshop), 'I now know what to call you! Went looking for you in each shed - you are Shed Girl!' Yes I do have three sheds in my backyard. I'm just glad it isn't my superhero power. I would be so disappointed.

Anyway, everything was going quite la lala la laa happily until JD went home over the weekend to visit his lady. I thought with a few days up my sleeve, I can spread out the work so I don't end up in codeine city again. Saturday wasn't too bad. Did the cutting in for the first white topcoat. Even went out that night for a drink and a dance. Couldn't use my left arm (strange as I'm right handed) but no one noticed enough to say anything. Gave myself Sunday off to lunch with William and Marie (Now there's a lame superhero duo if ever there was one).

Monday came and I thought, 'Just one roll over each wall. Won't take too long. Not too much pain to deal with. Go visit the folks after lunch. It will be all good.' Mixed up the paint. Gave myself a break before returning to begin (really don't have a great deal of strength in the arms at the moment). Picked up the tin to pour into the tray (I know this is basic - wait) then noticed a MASSIVE pool of paint around the bottom and all over the drop sheet. Dropped a few expletives myself and worked out that I'm not a clumsy paint mixer - there was a hole in the paint tin and since Saturday I had lost about a third of the tin. Complete panic occurred. Rang the only person who I knew to be home on that day who might come and help slap paint on anything that stayed still long enough (the dog's sleeping - I don't care - paint her!). Unfortunately, knight-in-shining-armour (KISA!) wasn't at home but still managed to wrangle a spare hour to slap some paint on poor Phoebes for me (Another story for another time - Asfat!). Thank you KISA - you're my hero of this week and I'm still very sorry about your Phoebes (also Asfat).

Eight hours later with only lightening breaks I managed to have used up all of the Alpaca White paint (How do they get those Alpacas so smooth and creamy?) Top coat No 1 done. Second Cutting in done. Window done. More of Phoebe done. Shed Girl? Done in completely.

Swinging Away!

JD has been and gone twice already since the last post and I still haven't done any more painting. Given how bad I felt after last time I do have the perfect excuse - I'm just not sure how long this excuse will wear with others. I received a delightful letter from Centrelink during the week telling me that my payments had been suspended. When I visited them to ask them why, they told me it was because I hadn't signed a work agreement form. I asked them why they hadn't let me know this, so after checking the computer, they told me it was because I had a doctors certificate saying that I couldn't work but it had now expired so I am now expected to get work but they hadn't informed me of this procedure. Ahh Centrelink, your logic is not of our Earth logic.

Thankfully, I have had the Melbourne Swing Festival to take my mind away from such trivial matters - it's a long weekend Centrelink, how do you expect me to go job hunting when everyone is away/watching soccer/dancing? Lots of very talented and dedicated people have been congregating all over Melbourne wearing awesome t-shirts and beautiful Asian inspired clothes for variously themed events. Volunteering at these events means I get free access in exchange for sitting around chatting to some very interesting people. My spare time this week has been spent on altering clothes to wear to these events which has been lovely as cleaning up at the end of a sewing session hasn't meant running paint brushes under freezing cold water for 20 minutes while it is 8 degress celcius outside.

Even managed to get JD to help with the sewing stuff - he tied me into my dress last night and took pictures - he is becoming my apprentice everything at the moment! Actually, yesterday ended up being a little surreal. Had a ballet class in the afternoon, swing ball in the evening and late night catch up with friends at a surburban pub with an 80's cover band and loads of drunk teenagers falling over each other and getting thrown out. Evolution teaches us nothing about our behaviour - does it BP?

The White Room

My latest theory is that my left shoulder likes a little of the weird stuff. JD and I have been painting like crazy for the last few days. He did the ceiling and most of the walls. I helped with the cutting in, some sanding and using leftover paint for bits of furniture, but that was too much for the level of recovery I'm at. I felt like I had a knife embedded in my shoulder. The kind of pain that makes you cry. I freaked out poor JD stretching and trying to get the kinks out later that night. I ended up putting Dr Horribles' sing-along blog on and all was forgotten. We had also watched an older Dr Who - one set during World War II and I immediately resolved to make myself a set of period male suits and costumes - "Tonight ladies and gentlemen, I'm wearing the Winston Churchill!!" Female service uniforms are also quite strong and sexy, I will make these for future dance balls as well. Truly beautiful and finally a reason to dress like Captain Jack!

Visiting Mike d' Physio today, I found an elbow burrowing into THAT spot in my shoulder. Heck it was painful but I found myself actually enjoying it... Having been pummelled within an inch of 'is this a physio or bondage session?' I was lying on a heat bag in recovery when I began to receive a new message from my shoulder: I need more heat. In the same way I felt like I had a knife in my shoulder yesterday I now wanted to ram a red hot poker into that same spot. Not happy John! I had to ask JD to take me op shopping in the afternoon to lift my spirits - as if he needed to be coerced!

The upshot is that I walked into the workroom last night (which thanks to William has a working title of 'Hard Candy') and it is all white. From pink walls and camel carpet for three and a half years to white freshness at every point you look into the room was a delightful surprise. Radio paradise even managed to play the Cream classic during the afternoon to herald the moment. Progress is still painfully slow however - in every way imaginable.

Surprise!!

JD - a long time friend, arrived fresh from dental hell yesterday as planned, half an hour before I left for work to inform me that the course he was going to do in the city and needed my spare bungalow for was on again and therefore could he still have the room. Surprise!!

Well good sir, if you still want the room, I'm afraid you really are going to have to help out, otherwise you won't get in there and I'm sure sleeping on the lounge floor will get very tiring, very quickly.

It's a lovely sunny day today, so I will be trying to get the last of the chalk marks off the walls and final bits of door frame sanded for undercoating.

I have a lesson on how to use my brand new overlocker at 4 pm. My mother bought it for me a week ago - completely out of the blue. So lots happening. JD is doing the dishes, bless him, after a delightful breakfast of toast, museli and chocolate birthday cake made by his lovely lady.

Spoilt..

Having had the time to make this room happen the way I want it to has led to two dilemmas. The first being how am I going to achieve this look and the second is how will I approach this physically.

My neighbour came over to visit last Friday. A lovely man who has always been been willing to assist a damsel in distress.. He helped me to measure the walls all so now I know that at certain points the walls are up to an inch out of whack. It's no surprise that the first attempt to draw the lines went so badly so quickly.

So to adddress the first dilemma I need to create a white border around each wall which takes into account the slack created by cracked and bent out of shape walls. This will leave a perfectly aligned space in the main part of the wall with which I can display the most wanted stripes to ever exist.

Instead of spending Sunday afternoon preparing the room for this, I did manage to succumbe to the call of William and ended up lunching in the gritty end of an upmarket street in one of Melbournes' trendy suburbs. Five hours later I felt incredibly cold and I'm sure William felt incredibly drunk, but nonetheless I felt better for getting pent-up issues off my chest and apart from the parking ticket I received (I'm certain they changed the sign on me - there were street works going on around us) it was time well spent.

Sunday evening saw me at one of my regular dance gigs, still talking to anyone about these stripes and low and behold, I had an offer of help from someone I barely knew!! Happy to have the offer of help but then instantly unsure whether to allow a stranger into my house to perform a demanding task - I was concerned about taking advantage - for both of us. While I was discussing this with someone else, I received a second offer of help - suddenly I was spoilt for help!! Walking over to introduce the two and explain the development, my first offer waved goodbye and left the venue. What the..?

Having someone to paint the ceiling so that my head doesn't fall of my shoulders was still a blessing, but then I spoke to JD Monday morning who was coming to visit Melbourne for a week, could he stay at my place and would I like help with my room? Then there were two again!!

So at the moment I'm waiting for JD to arrive fresh from dental hell, but I'm sure that between the two of us we can at least get the ceiling done over the next week - I even have assistance in reserve if I need it. Suddenly I'm spoilt for help from nice people who have nothing to gain by their offer of help.

I only hope that soon, when I'm creating clothes/furniture/products or anything that takes my fancy. Someone will be able to say of my work; "This is really lovely and helpful. Thank you - I feel quite spoilt!"

The White Stripes dilemma continued...

Well thankfully some of the heat has left the metaphorical kitchen. There was a time factor involved in getting this room happening which no longer exists. I am left with another problem of painting over everything and starting again to do this the right way which would be fine except for the pain factor. Saw a surgeon yesterday who told me that it will be fine to do these things but it won't make it any less painful. On bad days there is codeine though.

The good news is that I managed to get an undercoat on the floorboards. This has been the highlight of my week. I had been visiting hardware stores asking about the best way to go about painting the floorboards white and keeping them that way. Every single person I have mentioned this to has told me not to do this, which only made me more determined. The last straw was a visit from my mother whose comment about the floorboards going white was that I would live to regret it. The feeling of relief at the first strokes of the roller going over those boards was blissful. I felt as though I was coming home.

Now I need to decide whether I keep the walls pink. I am toying with painting the whole room white and beginning again. Will people know the difference between a white room with pink stripes rather than the current plan of a pink room with white stripes? Could my sanity cope? I really want to just get in there and start designing already, it's quite frustrating.

At least I now have access to online radio and it's plugged in to my very exquisite stereo. It is a cold and wet day outside so being stuck inside with some ultimately interesting decisions will have the best vibe I could hope for. I just need to grab a coin to help me make those decisions...

My theory is that good design should be practical, helpful and as often as possible - beautiful. However, I am dealing with a most unhelpful design at the moment and it almost has me beaten.

You see, I want to turn my recently vacant room into a colourful, cheerful and beautiful place to work and create. In order to do justice to the deep dusky pink walls, they need white stripes and nothing else will do. Unfortunately, a whole bunch of impracticals stood in the way which include physical limitations, uneven and cold walls as well as no particular clue as to the best way to achieve this look.

Friends came over on the weekend to help with the physical limitations, they reached areas my neck refuses to at the moment and my brother - the engineering consultant, came over later with his house mate for a second shift. Probably the wrong order but that's how impractical things go.

At the end of the day, half of one wall was taped, ready for painting because the engineering consultant refused to do any more given how badly the lines were ruled. Later on Tuesday, I was running out of the house to get to work, glanced in the window and saw half of the measely bits of very expensive painters tape just hanging around - about an inch off the wall. Yeah, normal tape could never do that.

Consoled myself by catching up on an episode of Dr Who I had missed only to discover that even the Daleks could manage a paint job and I still had had no luck.