Yesterday was one of THOSE days.  You know what I mean.  A day where you spend all day busting your ass trying to accomplish something only to end the day with the realization that you really accomplished NOTHING except having yelling matches with your spouse, scraping all the skin off of your knuckles, and collapsing into bed beyond exhausted despite accomplishing nothing.

It all started innocently enough.  We are turning one of the bedrooms in this house into an office.  The first and most horrible part of this renovation is the taking down of wallpaper…..wallpaper that previous owners have painted over.  Yeah, you can see where this is going.

We began by using a paper tiger to score the wallpaper and adding a chemical wallpaper remover.  What happened, though, was that there was too much paint and all we could score with the paper tiger was the paint and not the wallpaper.  We moved on to Plan B which was to use power scrapers with razor blades to manually and forcefully scrape the painted-over wallpaper off the walls.  It was very slow going and every time we hit a spot of stubborn and very stuck-on wallpaper, the scraper would move and we would scrape our knuckles on the wall.  After enough of those, we each had at least one skinless knuckle and a very bad mood going on.

“We need to find the people who painted over this wallpaper and murder them,” I told Jessie.  He gave me a crooked grin over his shoulder.  Then I had a bit of a delirious conversation with my conscience.

My conscience isn’t like Jiminy Cricket.  My conscience is once of those tiny asshole versions of myself with the halo and wings.  One time, I got mad at her and ripped her damned wings off.  She didn’t talk to me for a while and that time in my life still lives in infamy in my hometown.

“Now Somer,” my conscience said to me.  “You don’t REALLY wish harm upon the people who did this to the wallpaper.”

“Yes I do.”  I replied.

“Now, Somer!  You are better than that.  You know that in reality you would feel terrible if you brought about harm on a real person.”

“Okay, okay.  Maybe not murder.  I WOULD like to at least paddle the people.  This sucks.  Why couldn’t they take the fucking wallpaper down before painting?  This is just pure laziness!”

“You’ll be grateful at the end of this process that you decided to do it the right way.  Just push through.”

I scrape my knuckle on the wall again.

“No, I change my mind.  I want to kill whoever did this!”

“Now Somer!”

“Oh my God, SHUT UP!”

Off in my little corner of the room I started to giggle at myself and my in-depth argument with my conscience.  Then I scraped my knuckle again, cussed a blue streak, kicked the scraper and stomped out of the room.  I needed a breather.

Jessie decided to go back to the home improvement store and try buying a wallpaper steamer.  Last effort.  It ended up working great.  Finally we found what we needed.  Then just as we were heaving a heavy sigh of relief, Lukas came stumbling into the room totally naked with his pajamas bunched around his ankles with a huge smile on his face.  He happily informed us that he had gone poopy in the potty and Jessie and I had a good laugh and were grateful for the distraction.

After all of that, we got a section of wall no wader than a refrigerator done yesterday.  We went to bed at 8:30 completely disgusted with the whole project and decided to start anew today.  Hopefully it goes better and we actually make some damned progress!

I haven’t taken the proper opportunity to show him off.

Untitled from Somer Canon on Vimeo.

Today and yesterday are the first days in two weeks that I have had little or nothing to do.  I’ve been baking my ass off, entertaining family, and being the grand master of jolly in this house.  And people, that shit is tiring.  I sit here at my desk today trying to think of some amusing anecdote to share with you all, and my well is dry.  All I can think about are the cookies I have to bake tomorrow, the presents that still need to be wrapped, the Christmas party Jessie and I are attending next week and the 5 Days of Decadence that start on Monday.

Last night, we ran a few errands and since a few of our stops only included the purchasing of one item, Jessie would run into the store and the boys and I would sit in the car.  I had some quiet time to do some thinking and reflecting, particularly about my holidays past.

My mom was the psychotic merry maker of our family when I was small.  She had to be a bit crazy about it to make up the difference from my horrible grump of a dad who constantly complained about the gift-giving process of the holidays.  He hates giving gifts (even to his wife and kids) and complained about it all the time.  He hated having the house decorated (even though my mom did all the work and he never lifted a finger to help) and he hated the obligatory family rounds we had to make every year.  He was never nice to be around during the holidays.  But last night I recalled a memory of my dad that actually made me smile.  It was Christmas Eve and it was dark outside.  We had just left my Aunt Barbara’s house where my mother’s family had their big holiday get-together and gift exchange.  We were all tired and our bellies were full.  We were huddled together on the long seat of his truck.  I remember it was snowing and I was looking out the window watching the houses decorated with lights pass us by.  My father had the radio on a country music station as he always did.  Then Elvis’ “Blue Christmas” came on.  Until this point, the cab of the truck had been deathly quiet. Nobody spoke; there was no pleasant conversation going on.  But when the song came on, my father turned up the radio and began singing along to it, exaggerating the background diddies sang by high pitched women.  I remember my brother and I laughing so hard that tears streamed down our faces at this strange and spontaneous outburst of silliness from our father.  To this day, when I hear that song, I sing it like my father did that night.  It’s a small thing and a very rare instance of my father not hating us as hard as he could in those days.  It still makes me smile.