newly exhausted

All three boys appear to be thriving, if the oldest is less than impressed with 6:45 early band, the middle seems to be annoyed with reading aloud 15 minutes a night with a three sentence reflection or summary... well that's the first two. The little one doesn't seem fazed a bit.

The week has been rough for me but more in a manual labor sort of way, which really is a harsh segue between my life of leisure all summer and what is sure to be a constant substitute teacher gig if I can manage to make that happen. Ugh. Manual labor sucks. Why am I still awake?

Week before this one my friend called me up and said she was bidding on a job but it was such a huge house and a complicated faux finish, the job would require two people and would I help? Sure. The houses in the neighborhood were all emptied out and the inhabitants had to buy second (or in some cases that would be third) homes because the Missouri River rose so high, but I think most of the houses just had water in the basements. This house was fine, even though the river is in the back yard the levee kept the water where it belongs and no ground water entered. Many people are having painting and such done now because all their furniture is out, some places have had more damage than others. She billed it as a five day thing. Well, five days into this and we are not much more than half done yet with this hugegiganticenormousgargantuon house. This faux finish is humbling and stinky and sticky and I am not very good at it, I do not seem to be learning quickly, and I frankly dread each and every day because the stupid glaze just dries so fast at times, and I haven't been doing this for 25 years like my friend has, and geesh what a pain! Don't get me wrong, it is enjoyable at times, but ugh. So tired. I just don't really move that fast.

Here is what it looks like, but not really because a cell phone photo could never capture the finish.

But what is fascinating to me is the house itself. This house has huge walls and gigantic columns and wood floors and doors... real actual wood all perfect and exactly distressed and stained and gorgeous floors and doors. Slate cabinet tops, actually slate. People I once thought of as having nice houses now just barely pass inspection, just because of the sheer, lunatic proportions of this house, the acres of wood flooring, the bizarre and mysterious slow-close action of the kitchen drawers. I admit it, I pulled open two drawers and "raced" them. Oh the special drawers are in the bathroom too. Is it a magnet? A little machine in there that grabs and closes after the user pushes the drawer mostly shut. Some drawer gremlin?

One thing I consider to be a design flaw is the excessive number of light switches. I spent a large portion of time today removing switch plate and outlet plate covers in the basement. My pocket was literally full of tiny screws. I didn't count the covers but I meant to. I thought about this, and decided to inform you all, my 3 bedroom apartment has 10 electrical outlets and 6 light switches. The basement of the house in question is larger than my entire apartment. Actually just the upstairs living room of the house is larger than my apartment. The garage might be larger than my apartment. Oh and there are two garages. I think the people have strange taste and am very interested in the furniture eventually going back into this house, but I doubt I see it for real.