It’s great when a plan comes together. And terrifying. We decided a while ago to get our place painted. I guess there’s something about white walls with occasional patches of ‘who knows what that was’ that doesn’t quite shout ‘home.’ We needed some color.
Well, that’s the fun part. You get to look at swatches and imagine what the flat looks like in yellow or maroon or light green or the kind of blue that looks like a nice day even when it’s raining. But the thing is, you can do that forever. You can pitch, snoop; there’s an app wherein you can apply paint to a picture of your living room. And so Burke sent me 540 pictures of me sitting in my armchair reading an e-reader and sipping a coffee with the orange, yellow, blue, and gray walls. It was like the Civil War.
Finally, we found a company online and, after a few texts, there was a man standing in my living room suffering through my bad Czech and zapping my walls with an electric tape measure.
“Probably October,” he said.
“That’s fine.” And I meant it. For there’s nothing better than doing something and getting things into motion. But if there is, it’s doing something, getting things into motion and then not having to do anything about it for a while. I went back to my John Langan horror stories, lived my life, and breathed a sigh of relief.
A day later a text came: How about Tuesday?
This Tuesday? As in six days from now, Tuesday?
Yeah, that one. Tuesday.
OK! Sure!
I went into panic mode. Now, I had to do things.
Things: rent a hotel for the night, remove the small things and books from shelves and windows, bring the cat somewhere. (My cat is famously under your feet. I can just see the headline: Painter Falls Off Ladder on Balcony as Cat Follows Sunlight.)
Then things started falling into plan. The hotel was arranged. Not only that, but it’s about 400 feet from my flat. Not only that, but there’s a solid chance I’ll be able to see my flat from my hotel room. Not only that, but I have high-powered binoculars and I’ll just check out my flat’s … discretionary rating. Not only that, but a good friend used to work at said hotel and got us an upgrade. Everything’s coming up Me!
The cat was a different story. I had to get her into a small carrier – a thing she long ago learned was something she didn’t like doing. The second the carrier came out and I filled it with treats, she knew. She sniffed and then eyeballed me. Then came a long series of meows heard on the moon. One Uber Pet driver blipped, but the second guy came through. It was a 25-minute ride. I’m sure he still hears the meows.
By the time I got back home, books were being stowed on the balcony. I usually see the number of books in my house as a positive sign. Yesterday, I was beginning to think I was involved in an old sitcom comedy sketch. The one where a miscommunication leads to me handing Burke books from the living room door and her handing me the same books back through the bedroom window.
“How do we have so many books?! I didn’t know there were this many books on Earth!”
I threw a book on the couch and instantly picked it up and apologized to it.
My tantrums are very manly.
By 8 o’clock everything in our flat that was smaller than a chair was on our balcony. We organized it like a satisfying Tetris game: a box of books slips into that little slot there, a bag of minutiae tucks into that cubby there. It’s the little things.
Since we’ll be out of the house all day – and therefore, our normal routine – Tuesday (yes, this Tuesday) would be a free day. A day of carbs, beer, hotel rooms, and spying on my own house.
It’s great when a plan comes together.
