Justifiable Homicide

*

One of the stipulations for getting to live in this big (mostly) empty house is that Dan and I agreed to help my mom out with some of the major projects that need to be accomplished to make the house sale- or rentable. Since we had no furniture, internet, or television for the first week+ we were here, we spent most of our time working on the first big project, which was to paint my sister's old bedroom. Somehow, back in the early '00s, my mom took leave of her senses and let my sister paint her bedroom red with black trim. The worst part is that the large built-in book case/desk units in the room were also black, which meant a lot of small fiddly painting, and because the room was mostly red and black, we knew that it wasn't a matter of just a simple coat of paint.




Before...

We knew it was a big job, so we decided to consult an expert. A friend of mine worked for an independent paint store for many years, and knows more about paint and the paint business than anyone else I've ever met. I sent her an email describing the situation and asking for recommendations and advice, and she wrote me a novel in response that outlined all of our options and choices, with helpful commentary. The first thing we had to do when we got here was to check how many layers of paint were on the walls, since I knew there were at least three and maybe as many as 7 or 8, depending on how many times it had been painted since the last time it was stripped. (The house is pretty old, with at least 3 owners prior to my mom, so it was possible that we'd have lots and lots of old paint to deal with.) My friend had given me a plethora of options for paint stripping, so we were prepared to have the room closed off for many days while waiting for a stripper to do its job. When we did a bit of chipping away, however, we discovered some faux wood paneling on some of the walls covered with three layers of paint, so we knew stripping wouldn't be necessary.


Giant ball of used tape!

The second thing we did was to go to the Ace Hardware in town, where my mom said was a list of all of the various paint colors she'd used in the house in the past 20-odd years she's been here. We decided to use the same color on the walls in the bedroom as in the hallway and living room ("Powdery mist", aka a light tan color) and all the trim in the same color ("linen") as the trim in the whole rest of the house. My friend had told me that if we didn't need to strip the paint, we would for sure need stain-blocking primer to help cover the black and red, and Ace was kind enough to tint it for us to match the color we'd eventually paint.

So once we'd bought the tape our friend recommended ("The green stuff is cheaper and if your project is going to last a week or less, don't bother buying the blue stuff") and taped everything off and put down plastic, we began by priming all the red walls and all the black trim. And then we started on the first black built-in. Only a few minutes into our project, it was clear that Laurel was going to have to die for her sins. Painting every surface of every cubbyhole in that built-in was absolute torture - we had to do it all by hand, sharing the same bucket of primer, Dan doing the above bits (and only getting a little bit on my head), me doing the below bits (and cursing at the tedium).



2 coats of primer on walls, one coat of primer on built-in



Trim primer'd, walls/built-ins painted


It was toward the end of the first coat of primer on the first built-in that we began to plot our revenge. And then we started on the second built-in, which has a desk and an underside that I had to lay on my back to reach, while primer dripped on my face, and the murderous fantasies began.


Walls painted, trim primer'd

We ended up doing two coats of primer on everything, to ensure we wouldn't have to use a ton of (more expensive) paint, and then we did two coats of paint. So we painted each and every one of those built-ins over and over and over and by the last time, we had all kinds of elaborate torture situations dreamed up, and decided that my mom and the friend who helped her paint deserved horrible, horrible death as well. Finally, after working on it for several hours a day together, we finished the last touch-ups on the trim five days later.








After!

*Dan wrote the above poem using the fridge poetry. It really says everything that needs to be said about the sucketry of the paint project.

Knee, jerk

Recent focus in parts of the blogosphere about food choices have got me thinking about the food choices we make and why we make them. Many of the regular bloggers I read seem to be making changes, throwing out processed food, eschewing factory-farmed meat and dairy, and making healthier choices about food in general for themselves and their loved ones.

Awesome, sez I. I've made similar choices about what I buy and what I eat for years. But all this talk about food and where it comes from and what's good and what's bad is, I've noticed, triggering my knee to start moving up toward my gut of its own accord.

Internet, I have a confession to make. When I read about someone becoming vegan, when someone tells me they are going to become vegan, I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's a weird roil of turmoil, of "oh crap!", and my mind automatically goes from "I like this person" to "Shit, I don't know what to think about this person now."

Admittedly, I think there's sort of a good reason for my reaction. I think I've written before about some ex-friends and some of the travails we had with them during the time when they were engaged and we were engaged. All our troubles seemed to begin with the day they announced to us that they'd watched some sort of PETA propaganda video and decided to go vegan. I tried to be understanding and accommodating (even making birthday cakes with no eggs and using vegan margarine and soy milk for the frosting) but damn, it was a trying time, which ended in frustration and tears and no longer being friends with them. I guess I'm just not OK with being proselytized to, regardless of whether it's about how Jesus should be my personal savior or tracts from Church of Vegan.

Even though I've got reasons for my reactions, it's still probably not healthy for me to snap to an instant negative judgment about someone when they announce a major dietary change. As long as they don't try to convince me that The Vegan Way Is The Only Way, I really honestly don't have a problem with it. It's just that, since our experience in 2007, whenever someone I know (either in real life or internet life) becomes vegan, I feel as though that person is going to turn into an asshole.

What about you, Internet? Do you have any knee-jerk reactions to particular situations?

How to process a pumpkin: a pictorial essay

Materials you will need:



1 sugar pumpkin (not the kind you carve)
1 knife
1 cutting board
1 9x13 pan
aluminum foil
oven
large spoon
colander
food processor
cheesecloth

Preheat oven to 400F.

1. Using big knife, cut pumpkin in half across the middle.






2. Scoop out seeds using your hands or a spoon. If you want to keep them, do it over a colander under running water. Separate the seeds from the strands, rinse, and place on a cookie sheet to dry for a day.





3. Use a spoon to scrape out as many of the strings as you can. It's not a big deal if you can't get them all.





4. Place pumpkin halves flesh-side down in the baking pan and add about 1/4 inch of water to the bottom of the pan. Cover with aluminum foil and roast for 45-60 minutes or until flesh is soft when poked with a fork. Let cool.



before


after

5. When pumpkin halves are cool enough to handle, use large spoon to scrape soft flesh from rind. Put 1/4 of the flesh in the food processor at a time. Process until very smooth (the consistency of baby food). Add processed pumpkin to a bowl and repeat until all the pumpkin is pureed.








6. Cut a length of cheesecloth big enough to create a pouch, making sure you have several thicknesses layered on top of one another. Place square of cheesecloth over a colander and spoon some of the pumpkin into the middle.







7. Gather cheesecloth up over pumpkin puree and make a little sack with your hands. Use your hands to massage and squeeze as much water as you can out of the pumpkin without squeezing flesh out the holes in the cheesecloth. This may take a while.




8. Put now-dry pumpkin puree into a different bowl.



9. Repeat steps 8 and 9 until all pumpkin has been dehydrated. (If you aren't in a hurry, you can spread all the pumpkin over cheesecloth in a colander in the sink and let it sit for several hours so the water runs out. I am not that patient.)



10. Voila! You now have at least one pumpkin pie's worth of fresh pumpkin mush. You can rinse out and reuse the cheesecloth for another project. It will dry in a short amount of time and be only slightly orange.




Coming soon: making pumpkin pie from scratch.

(All photos by Dan except the one of the pumpkin seeds, which I took.)