I see said the blind man as he picked up the hammer and saw

I've begun to realize that I am getting old. I am noticing wrinkles on my face and I can't stay up past 10 pm anymore. I don't think that I am old, I'm just moving in that direction. The biggest sign is that I have to squint at every presentation and street sign. I've put it off until I am 25 - but I think I may need to just suck it up and wear contacts or glasses all the time now.

I went to the eye doctor on Saturday to get a prescription for contacts. I've never worn these before and let me say - I am not a fan. Sticking something in my eye is crazy unnatural; it's right up there with tanning beds and Donald Trump's hair. Some things are just not supposed to exist.

I am going to give them a try a though. They do seem uber convenient. Saturday and Sunday went pretty well; it just felt like I had an eye lash in my eye the whole time. Monday morning was a wreck. I was running late and couldn't get the stupid lens in my eye. Then it fell in the sink and I had to take the time to clean it, but I didn't really clean it so when I did get it my eye it burned. Bad. Which caused me to yell and hop around the bathroom grabbing at my eye. When your eye is burning it doesn't really like to open up which made it ridiculous hard to get the lens out. When I finally did pry my eye open and pull the lens out I was so fed up that I threw the lens away, grabbed my glasses and headed to work.

Today I was able to get them in without burning my cornea off, but getting them out was another story. It took a LONG time and involved me scraping the inside of my eyelid with my nail. Twice. I'm not sure this is going to work out for me. I am either going to blind myself or master contacts. I hope it's the latter.

Dramatic Lemur

It's creepy and cool all at the same time.

I give you the dramatic lemur:



*Thanks Nate for showing me this!

Free!

Free dresser for the taking.

Solid wood. Has been stripped and repainted white. It looks good, but there is remaining paint stripper that soaked into the wood and is causing the new paint to become tacky. Currently unusable.

With some hard work this dresser could be stripped, sanded, primed, painted and sealed again to possibly be a beautiful piece of furniture. Possibly. Or it may be the largest time sink hole EVER.

Any takers?

Sometimes it's best to not even start

I know. The VP debate was soooo last week. And there wasn't anything remarkable about it at all. I was hoping for some major blunders and there weren't any. Sigh... instead we shall talk about my blunders....

Ben says that I overestimate my abilities and underestimate the amount of work a job takes. He says that I don't set reasonable goals for myself. I say that he doesn't dream big enough. Can we clean the whole house, mow the grass, discuss our marriage AND plan our financial future all on a Thursday evening? Yes we can! Dream big!

But... recently I think that I might have taken on a project that morphed into a time-sucking-waste-hole and maybe it was over my head. Maybe. It all started with this dresser:

I had redone it a couple years ago and had decoupaged antique postcards on the drawers and top. It was a unique dresser and I liked it, but it was time for a change. It was time for all of my furniture to match. Like a grown-up. The plan was to paint my headboard and dresser white. In one Saturday. Simple right? Just prime it, paint it and seal it. Yeah.

Well when I painted the dresser last time I was lazy and didn't prime it and the paint started peeling and then the cards wouldn't come off.... and it turns out I needed to strip the whole thing!

Every project always morphs into something that is so huge it's ridiculous. So I drove off to Lowe's and I convinced myself to buy a soy-based paint stripper because I care about the environment and am secretly a closet hippy. It actually worked surprisingly well - it just took longer to soak in and required a little more elbow grease than the burn-your-skin-off stripper. And when I say it took longer I mean that it took all of Saturday and most of Sunday to strip the dresser to look like this:
I can't decide if it looks like a designer urban grit piece of furniture or if it looks like it should be on the side of the road. It also smells like paint so all of our clothes are currently chilling on our futon and the headboard is hanging out in the hallway. Ahhhh!

Now that I've put this much work into the dresser part of me thinks I should just strip it down to the wood and stain it. But that would defeat the purpose of the whole project - to get my furniture to match. So on Saturday I hope to finish stripping it and paint it white! I hope. Anyone who wants to help is more than welcome. I still have a headboard and a nightstand to do. Dream big!

Politics - The new Survivor

While we were hanging out with some friends this weekend, Matt put a finger on why I am so intrigued by this year's presidential race. It's like a T.V. drama. Each day it just keeps getting better. I have to tune in every day just to find out what happened.

When I thought McCain couldn't win, he picked Palin as his running mate and things got more interesting. When I had thought someone had said the dumbest thing ever, they let the vice presidential candidates talk. When I thought that there couldn't be anything left for the candidates to talk about, our financial system tanked and Obama and McCain rushed in to rescue us (which last time I checked they weren't actually economists or on any finance committee). This is like the best reality show EVER. And I get to help vote someone off. You can't ask for better entertainment.

I cannot wait for the VP debate. It's going to be hilarious. Biden says whatever pops into his head and Palin doesn't seem like she is ever really sure what to say. This will be a great debate. I have no idea who to vote for, but I am certainly being entertained while I figure it out.

Favorite quotes from a V.P. candidate:

Biden on the 1929 market crash:
"When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed. He said, 'look, here's what happened."
(Roosevelt wasn't president then and television wasn't invented until later)

Palin when asked what magazines or newspapers she reads:
"Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years."

I love this country.