It’s been an interesting week… if by ‘interesting’ you mean ‘a blood-pressure-spiking, rant-inducing tragicomedy of ridiculousness’.

Or in other words:  ‘Same-old, same-old’.

We started the process for our second floor renovation in early August, reasoning that two and a half months was lots of time to get a permit, frame a storage closet and a bathroom, and insulate before the weather turned cold.  I sealed my doom by signing up for a six-week watercolour course to begin in mid-October, because the construction would be done by then, right?

Ha.  I reckoned without the glacial pace of structural engineers and bureaucracy.

Last week when we were rushing around getting ready for the framing inspection (we did the framing ourselves), I finally lost my grip… on everything from my paintbrush to my temper.

In our last watercolour class I had foolishly bravely decided to paint along with the instructor.  I didn’t expect great results; but what the heck, if you don’t try, you’ll never know, right?

I actually did okay for a while.  I laid in washes for sky and water, and underpainted my trees… and then my coordination short-circuited and my paintbrush (loaded with brown pigment) flipped out of my hand and bounced… not once; but twice… onto my painting.

Two gigantic dark-brown turds splotched down in the middle of my misty landscape.

I burst into uproarious laughter.

Taking their cue from my continuing chuckles, the rest of the class converged to giggle and cheer me on while I tried to convert my turds into dock pilings jutting out of the water.

I failed, but at least we all had a good laugh.

In between construction and turd-painting I’ve also been hard at work on Book 13, and apparently I need new reading glasses.  For a few days a muscle under my right eye twitched wildly, making me look like a female version of Dirty Harry on speed.

That turned out to be fitting, because when I discovered water puddling on our floor from a leaky door, I completely lost my shit and fired off… *ahem* …a strongly-worded missive¹ to our home-builder, who has been ignoring my deficiency reports since May.  I doubt if it did any good, but at least it relieved my feelings.

After that banner week, I couldn’t help snickering in anticipation of comedic disaster when I looked into my kitchen junk drawer.  It contains everything from screwdrivers to matches to notepads… and also a tube of lip balm, a black Sharpie marker, and a Tide pen all in the same convenient compartment.

Now, what could possibly go wrong?

So if you hear about a woman who accidentally poisoned herself by using a Tide pen instead of lip balm, you’ll know who it was.  Or who knows?  I might unwittingly use the Sharpie to enhance my Dirty Harry image with a permanent black moustache.

So whenever I make a blind grab for that tube of lip balm, I have to ask myself:  “Do ya feel lucky, punk?  Well… do ya?”

*

¹ Even though I really wanted to fill that email with enough profanity to make their eyes bleed, I didn’t use any swearwords at all.  Aren’t you proud of me?