{"id":6308,"date":"2025-09-16T06:43:03","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T04:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=6308"},"modified":"2025-12-24T10:41:53","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T09:41:53","slug":"free-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=6308","title":{"rendered":"Free Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN IN BRITAIN, 1914-1918 (Q 31052) Women painters at work on the exterior of the district railway station, Hammersmith. Copyright: ? IWM. Original Source: http:\/\/www.iwm.org.uk\/collections\/item\/object\/205296828<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s great when a plan comes together. And terrifying. We decided a while ago to get our place painted. I guess there\u2019s something about white walls with occasional patches of \u2018who knows what that was\u2019 that doesn\u2019t quite shout \u2018home.\u2019 We needed some color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, that\u2019s 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\u2019s raining. But the thing is, you can do that forever. You can pitch, snoop; there\u2019s 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.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cProbably October,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s fine.\u201d And I meant it. For there\u2019s nothing better than doing something and getting things into motion. But if there is, it\u2019s 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.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A day later a text came: How about Tuesday?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Tuesday? As in six days from now, Tuesday?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, that one. Tuesday.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

OK! Sure!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went into panic mode. Now, I had to do things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then things started falling into plan. The hotel was arranged. Not only that, but it\u2019s about 400 feet from my flat. Not only that, but there\u2019s a solid chance I\u2019ll be able to see my flat from my hotel room. Not only that, but I have high-powered binoculars and I\u2019ll just check out my flat\u2019s \u2026  discretionary rating. Not only that, but a good friend used to work at said hotel and got us an upgrade. Everything\u2019s coming up Me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cat was a different story. I had to get her into a small carrier \u2013 a thing she long ago learned was something she didn\u2019t 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\u2019m sure he still hears the meows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow do we have so many books?! I didn\u2019t know there were this many books on Earth!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I threw a book on the couch and instantly picked it up and apologized to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My tantrums are very manly.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 8 o\u2019clock 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\u2019s the little things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since we\u2019ll be out of the house all day \u2013 and therefore, our normal routine \u2013 Tuesday (yes, this Tuesday) would be a free day. A day of carbs, beer, hotel rooms, and spying on my own house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s great when a plan comes together.     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN IN BRITAIN, 1914-1918 (Q 31052) Women painters at work on the exterior of the district railway station, Hammersmith. Copyright: ? IWM. Original Source: http:\/\/www.iwm.org.uk\/collections\/item\/object\/205296828 It\u2019s great when a plan comes together. And terrifying. We decided a while ago to get our place painted. I guess there\u2019s something about white walls with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6309,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/960px-The_Employment_of_Women_in_Britain_1914-1918_Q31052.jpg?fit=960%2C722&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1DK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6308"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6310,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6308\/revisions\/6310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}