Hurry, hurry, hurry.

For my latest busy-ness, I decided to repaint the kitchen. Actually, I didn't decide to repaint the kitchen. I was working on our mural, and the kitchen got repainted as a result. And no, I didn't not spill paint all over the walls and floor. I just got a little carried away, that's all.

See, Seth and I have started a mural project for our house. We decided that as a joint activity, we are going to paint murals in each of our rooms, barring the master bedroom which is already pretty much painted as much as it can be. Seth wanted to start practicing in the laundry room, but I have always wanted birch trees in my kitchen, and as the kitchen is a much more accessible place and the laundry room is filthy, the kitchen won out. Here is what we are hoping to achieve in the end.

We primed the kitchen before he left, and then it became my job to complete as much as was convenient before he got back. Nancy, my pastor's wife, suggested that I paint in the sky before I start drawing in my trees, and I thought that would be a good idea. So I went down to the hardware store, found a blue that I think exactly matches the autumn sky around here (it may need some darker patches, but I can add those later on.), brought it home and began painting. I got halfway across the ceiling before I realized that 1) I was painting more than I had intended to, and 2) I was going to run out of paint.

The third thing I realized was that if the ceiling and half of two walls suddenly had a new coat of bright blue paint, the remainging smudged pink and white walls were going to look a little sloppy. That presented a delimma. Should I just leave those walls, or should I take advantage of the opportunity and repaint them? Well, well begun is half done, and we have paint left over from when we moved in, so I decided to make a project of it and repaint the whole kitchen.

Then I got an update from Seth. His boat had decided to let him come home for the weekend. A working weekend means that sailors are close enough to home that they can be bussed in every night to spend some time with their families. So Seth was coming home. He had hinted that he was hoping for a surprise. And my kitchen was in complete disarray. I had walls to prime, two colors to pick, two coats to put on, and drying schedules to arrange.

Painting three different colors on adjacent surfaces in one room is not easy, and I am not an overly practical person. It took me quite a while to figure out how I was going to tape and paint each surface. I did three different surfaces on the Friday that he came home: the first and second coats of the light green and the second coat of the ceiling. The dark green had been finished the night before, along with the first coat of blue.

Then I had just enough time to clean up the painting materials, clean up myself, and run to get Seth. I probably shouldn't have been driving. I was still a little woozy from all the paint fumes. But now, my kitchen is all painted, apart from the mural on the window wall, it looks much better, and I can say I did something from decision to clean up all by myself. Seth agrees that the current kitchen colors suit us much better than the old ones did. Of course, this picture doesn't show the mound of dishes that is piled up near my sink. I haven't done dishes since I started this project.

In other news, I have completed my interview with the Bremerton School District. My teaching permit has come in from the Office of the Superintend of Public Instruction. I am now a certified and practicing substitute teacher in Washington State. They say a substitute can work almost full time. I wonder what it's going to be like being employed several days out of the week. I should get all my chores done today just in case.

Seth sends greetings and looks forward to being home for a longer period of time. We are thinking about summer plans, but no plans have been made yet.

God bless you all in your various pursuits.