gettin' into scrapes

The title is actually a pun, and this post is probably really boring because it's about scraping paint, not about mischief and injuries. 

After a few months of being disgusted by the paint either peeling or chipping off of or layered globbily onto various surfaces in our apartment,  I finally started scraping. The more I scrape the more I want to scrape. Not because it's fun, but because it really looks terrible. I don't understand these people who did all of this painting. None of them ever thought of stripping the old paint, they just covered it up. I understand when you're moving you don't want to do all that hard stuff, but the cumulative effect is ridiculous. There are between nine and twelve layers of paint on the cabinets in the dining nook. There are a few colors in there, which I understand might not be to everyone's liking, but mostly it's just layers and layers of white. I'm scraping down to turquoise because the layer on top of the turquoise isn't really sticking to it. And I like turquoise well enough. To make matters worse, the people who did this painting didn't understand the concept of not painting hinges and clasps. A lot of our cabinets don't close all the way, so hopefully my scraping will solve that problem. Too bad it's not enamel paint. I would like to have some fordite in my rock collection. I would like to make the wood actually look like wood again, but I doubt that I'm going to have that much patience for scraping. 

But here's a part about injuries after all, as a reward for reading this far: I got a paint chip in my eye tonight and it hurt a lot. Channing fished it out with a q-tip, which hurt more. Channing broke his arm a week ago in an altercation with a bear. I was going to make him a leafy green mitten and paint his cast like a tree trunk, but it turns out he doesn't have to wear a cast because the break is so close to the elbow that if he didn't move his arm his elbow would fuse itself together. Which is kind of cool. And I'm glad he can do the dishes and take showers. But a tree arm would have been cool, too. So if you happen to break your arm, get a brown cast and I will make you a leafy green mitten for your fingers. I wouldn't suggest breaking your arm on purpose just so you can have a tree arm, because a broken arm seems to hurt a lot.  

Beaver Background Update

They are done! Almost. I just have to adjust the length when I get the actual song from my dear friend Keith. Here is a preview dam:

And they're stop-motion backgrounds, so there are 300 more just like that but slightly different. Exciting, huh? Also, logs. Whatever. 

Next step is Beaver Puppet! I don't have any idea how to make a beaver puppet, which means this is the kind of project that I want to do most. I like the ones with thinking. 

I'm tired. 

I spent almost three hours going grocery shopping today. Most of that was getting to and from the store, and most of that was because I decided to walk two miles to the train instead of waiting for the bus. Too bad the store I like is in San Francisco. Usually I don't make the trek, I just suck it up and go to the store where Channing got called stupid by the cashier for buying organic toothpaste. But today I had nothing to do, so I spent all day going to the store to get bulk spices and loose tea. Also, we got our CSA box yesterday so I've been planning menus to use all the foods that I don't usually eat. This is partly why we joined the CSA, so we would be forced to break out of our ruts of getting the same vegetables every time we went shopping. This week's box had broccoli, broccoli raab, bok choi, salad mix, onions, pomegranate, butternut squash, and tokyo turnips. Our plan worked, because the only things in there that we would usually buy are onions and pomegranates. I would get broccoli, but someone who I live with and eat with at nearly every meal refuses to eat it without making gagging faces. Unfortunately it turns out that this plan is also a lot of work what with the finding recipes and shopping for extra ingredients and cooking the food and everything. I guess it's worth it, but sometimes it seems like I spend more energy making the food than I get from eating the food.