Renovations Day Two

So tired today, but we got a lot more done. My awesome friends Tiffany and Christine came to help, and that was really the thing that got us over the hump today. All the rooms are painted and the carpet is up in two rooms and the hallway. It's easy to get up, but the tack strips are a hooker to get out. Luckily, Patrick doesn't mind doing those!

Tomorrow's agenda includes: touching up paint in our room, pulling up the rest of the carpet, pulling up the tack strips, and sanding the kitchen cabinets. So we're still a little behind where I wanted to be, but perhaps I was a bit ambitious to begin with. Madeline was going to go to school this week one day, but perhaps we'll make it two so I can get a few more things done-- and besides, she misses her friends and wants to play outside all day anyway!

No pictures tonight but I'll have some, if not here, on my other pages, by Monday or Tuesday.

I am so sore but feel so great about what we've done without having to hire anyone to do it. That doesn't mean that I wont get someone to come in at a later date and finish the job--- but I think what we've done so far is something to really be proud of.

New Home Renovations Day One, or Why I Will Hire Someone to Do This Next Time

Oh, my back. Oh, my neck. My neck and my back. A day (plus a few hours) into the cosmetic surgery on our new house and I find I have seriously misjudged the amount of time needed to do the painting and carpet pulling. For starters, I hate pulling down wallpaper. Scratch that. The actual paper came off the walls like buttah. It was the backing, which did NOT come down like buttah, that I hate. We spent most of today taking turns scraping the walls, getting wallpaper glue all over our hands and piling up what looks like wet toilet paper on the floor in what is going to be Madeline's room. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

We did get two other rooms painted, and the colors, as you can tell from the photos, are really, um, brighter than we thought. We're hoping that they will dry darker, and of course, once furniture gets set up in the rooms, that will make a difference. Tomorrow's work includes cleaning the gross walls, pulling down a wallpaper border that didn't want to come off today, and hopefully starting on the carpeting.

So if any of my friends here in Memphis want to come help, please call me! I could use some extra hands:)

Reflections on Faith

Been thinking a lot lately about faith vs. religion. I am not, for many pragmatic reasons, particularly religious, though I was raised Catholic. Ultimately, I married a Catholic man whose family happens to run in the same religious circles as mine, but we are not really regular attenders of any type of religious establishment, Catholic or otherwise. We get a lot of flak about it from his parents, my parents, and silent flak from others.

For awhile, I thought that my lack of attendance might be working against me. After all, I didn't get an assistantship for the 2nd year of my Master's, I didn't get into any of the schools to which I applied for doctoral work, and I didn't get the first (or 2nd, or 3rd) job for which I applied and interviewed. Could someone be telling me something? Could it be that I am not, in fact, a decent enough person, despite my religious shortcomings, to have good things happen for me?

When I really sat and thought about it, I realized something that has probably been lurking for years, and which, though I've voiced before, I'm not sure how much I really believed in. That realization was that you *can* be a good person, have good things happen to and for you, without going to church every week, kneeling, standing, praying, singing, kneeling again (remember I was raised Catholic), standing, taking Communion, and lighting many, many candles in the hopes that one saint or another will intervene on your behalf and answer your prayers (or as it seems to be in so many cases, grant wishes). I have long thought-- and usually have my suspicions confirmed-- that there are a shitload of hypocritical "Christians" out there. Front row on Sunday, scrubbed and smiling, but last out of the bar on Saturday, scowling and drunk.

I have never really made apologies for who I am and what I do: yes, I smoke on occasion. Hell yes, I drink. But I have never, ever, tried to hide that. I believe in doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do, not because I'm trying to save my sinner's soul from eternal damnnation and hellfire. I have given money to beggars, fed stray animals, volunteered. I do those things, again, not because I want brownie points, but because it feels good to do them. To make another person smile, to help someone not so fortunate in their lives as I am in mine, is just the right thing to do. For me, going to church when I don't get anything out of it, or praying to God/Jesus/various and sundry saints when I need something is hypocritical, and I just don't think it's right. I'd rather be a sinner than a hypocrite, because I've never felt wrong admitting my shortcomings. I know I'm impatient, anal-retentive, overly annoyed by small things and a drill sargeant. I KNOW. I love myself anyway.

So for me, believing that something good would happen after so much negativity was faith in the universe, faith that the good deeds I'd done would recycle themselves back to me (the word is karma, folks. Learn it. Use it.) Faith in karma, in the cycles of good and bad, eventually brought those good things to us.

I'm going to keep on believing. But you aren't going to see me in church anytime soon, so don't ask.