One Exhausting Week

It always seems that you never just have one thing going on. Typically, it goes from having nothing on my plate other than day to day ordinary stuff to my plate looking like it does at a chinese buffet. I think I have overwhelmed myself with obligations this time around. I have so much happening I literally can't turn my brain off to sleep some nights.

My parents just closed on a beautiful brick home, and because I have a creative and artistic side about me they asked me to step in and fill the role as interior decorator. I happily accepted, my parents are good people and my mom would do anything for me and I want to make their house perfect for them. The house is a custom built brick home that has everything they wanted and more, it is the perfect house for them. My step-dad loves lighthouses and ship and the house has many nautical touches like a metal plate on the fire place with ships and actual portholes in the bedrooms as windows. The previous owner went overboard on blue though. It had the ugliest blue paint and carpets everywhere.

We have been working night and day on the dining room, livingroom and foyer so far. They are all attached and very open. I decided we should sponge them in a 3 shades of a smokey blue. The rooms are huge, but after 4 days of painting we have finished that part. Now all that is left is the trim and the stenciled border. I hand made the stencils it is an anchor with the words "By the light, guide us home." My mom is a strong christian and my dad loves lighthouses so it was the perfect saying. The trim and border is going to be in a shimmery honeyed bronze color that matches the fireplace.

They ripped up the carpet and are getting wood laminate flooring, so my mom, grandma and I went shopping for it. I love my grandma dearly but she is one of those people that always makes her opinion known and it is always negative. She hates the paint, thinks it is too dark and will be like living in a cave. She hates the trim and border color even more, she thinks it should be in blue (even though she already says there is too much blue) So imagine the fun that floor shopping was.

She kept asking questions like to price flooring before mom had even picked out any she liked. The guy was like do you want me to price them all? Needless to say the man at Home Depot told us "I don't work on commission so when you decide you can talk to anyone." I think he meant you can talk to anyone else. Plus she kept wanting my mom to get a credit card and put it on there. They have more than enough money to pay for the flooring. Once she found the floor she liked best she didn't even give my mom a chance to look at anything else and she put away the samples so when we got home we realized they were gone.

My grandma has seven children and she has her favorites and then she has my mom, aunt cheryl and aunt cindy. She treats my mom like she is incapable and not well off. It is frustrating to me because my mom was a single mom to 3 kids and then remarried. She and my step dad have worked hard and now do fairly well for themselves. My mom is very thrifty, but that doesn't mean she is poor. She just likes a bargain. Grandma doesn't realize this. Then again Grandma once yelled at me when I was 7 for getting a fish hook embedded in my back so deep my lips started turning blue and I almost passed out as two forty year old fishermen pried it from my back with pliers. Apparently she felt I had done it to flirt with the fishermen.

So anyways our shopping trip was pretty much a waste, but we had the pamphlet from lowes so after grandma was safely home my parents, aunt and uncle and I decided upon a style. We are going with a wider more defined plank with well defined grain in a darker shade. It is going to look very much like what you can imagine a ship having.

On top of all the decorating I also am working on my application for a grant from the Ohiana Library Association in which I have to write up to six pieces of fiction and sixty pages. I am being anal and a perfectionist. I have three very diffrent pieces, a vampire piece in my normaly style, a fantasy piece aimed at a younger crowd and letters from a revolutionary war soldier to his parents. I think the last one actually is my favorite despite all the research required for it.

My parents' Christmas present is also on my todo list at the time. While I can't say what it is I can say that it is taking a lot of time considering I started about a month ago. It is turning out well, but not coming along nearly as fast as I would like.I hope it is finished in time for Christmas.