A Lesson from the Tortoise

I'm sure you're all familiar with the fable "The Tortoise and the Hare," in which the plodding tortoise beats out the lazy-ass hare by virtue of persistence. The moral of that story is "Slow and steady wins the race."

I need the tortoise to come paint my bathroom. If ever there was a job for a slow but persistent person (or, uh, reptile), this is it.

Unfortunately, I am neither slow nor steady. Damn it.

Back story: A. decided this winter to put up insulation in the bathroom to keep it from being cold and wet and mildew-y and all the other things you just don't want a bathroom to be. He put the insulation up. Yay! It was warmer! Problem solved.

And then we had silver insulation covering the walls in the downstairs bathroom. Futuristic and eye-catching, but not really in keeping with our decorative scheme. (That scheme being "not naked building materials.")

So after a considerable delay, A. put up Sheetrock. Yay!

And then we had dark blue Sheetrock imprinted with the reassuring "Mold-resistant" covering the walls in the downstairs bathroom. Still naked building materials.

After an even longer delay (A. really, really hates fiddly home improvement stuff, much preferring to build things with rocks or construct hand-operated cranes . . . which is a story for another day), A. got the trim up.  This involved some very exacting measurements of angles and cutting and fitting and a LOT of swearing. But he got it done.

Which just left me and the paint. Shit.

I hate painting. From the very first time I did it at about age sixteen when my parents had me paint my bedroom, I have hated it. I still hate it. And that is because I am not a detail person. I am not patient. I am not good at being slow and careful and painting trim. And I really suck at beading.

But A. did his part of the job, and now it's my turn.

Unfortunately, thanks to my day (and night) job of child wrangling, I have very limited time to do it. I have to do it when both kids are asleep, obviously, because OH GOD the HORROR of Cubby around paint is unfathomable. So, usually about an hour out of the day.

That's why I'm painting in stages. Ceiling first. And then the dreaded clean-up of the brush and roller and paint-smeared newspaper and so on. Today I did the first coat on the walls. And then the dreaded clean-up again. Next nice, dry day we have, I'll do another coat on the walls. And then clean-up.  And THEN, FINALLY, I can do the trim.

God help me.

But it's coming along, slowly but surely. Very slowly, and not really very surely, but coming.

Sure could use that tortoise, though. You know, one with opposable thumbs that can hold a paint brush.