Yeah…we haven’t made much headway on the unpacking yet. Good thing Brenda’s coming to help us with that. She and Bug are flying here tomorrow, and will be here for two weeks, whee! That should give us plenty of time to unpack and do a little sightseeing too.

Since we knew Brenda was coming to whip us into shape, we weren’t in a huge hurry to get the unpacking done. We decided it would be a good idea to paint Annalie’s room while most of her stuff was still in easy-to-move boxes. Her bedroom was a dark wine red that, while a lovely color, wasn’t a great color for a little girl. Also the room just needed to be painted, it had obviously been a few years.

Sunday we primed. I had photos of us priming the room, including some cute ones of Annalie making crazy designs with a paintbrush. I thought I had downloaded them, so I cleared the memory card. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Oh well.

Yesterday morning when Annalie realized that we were going to wait for Troy to get home before we started the actual painting, she was rather annoyed. She wanted to paint! She wanted princessy, ballerinaesque, girly-foo-foo pink walls! So by the time Troy got home, we ate dinner and changed into our painting clothes, she was super excited.

We carefully explained to Annalie that if she wanted to paint, she would have to listen carefully to our instructions and follow them. She definitely likes to do things her own way so I thought that might be a dealbreaker right there, but no. Annalie listened, repeated the instructions back to us, and nodded determinedly when we asked if she understood that if she didn’t follow the directions that she would have to stop painting.

I remember when my mom painted my room when I was about Annalie’s age. I was all excited about it till I actually helped with the painting a little and realized how boring it was. I thought Annalie would do something similar. She stuck it out though!

Annalie painted and painted, followed the directions to the letter, and only had a couple of small mishaps (getting a bit of pink paint on the baseboard and accidentally putting her hand on a wet wall when she lost her balance) both of which were things that everyone does sooner or later while they’re painting. In all, I’d say Annalie was responsible for about a quarter of the paint that got on the walls in that first coat, which is pretty respectable for a five-year-old. She just kept rolling on the paint till it was time for bed.

Okay, she stopped a couple of times for breaks, but I don’t blame her for that. Those rollers are heavy when they’re loaded with paint. And five-year-olds may not need coffee breaks but they definitely need silly breaks.

Heck, even dads need silly breaks once in a while.

By the time Annalie announced that she was tired and we realized it was 15 minutes past her bedtime, we’d almost completely finished the first coat. While I got Annalie into bed, Troy finished up and cleaned the rollers and brushes and trays. Today we did it all over again for the second coat.

Even though it’s a bit crazy that we painted right away, I think it was easier since we just had to move boxes around, not a whole room full of stuff. And if there’s anything more exciting than unpacking and setting up in a brand-new room with a fresh coat of paint, I don’t know what it is…unless it’s having wonderful friends who will do the unpacking for you!!!

We are SO looking forward to you getting here, Brenda and Bug! Fly safe!

I painted this with Katrina when I was in Omaha, on Day 1 of 7 Days last month. I had hoped that the colors would be even more muted, but oh well. I still like it. Michelle saw the photo on Flickr and she liked it too, so we met her in Encinitas for lunch.

Michelle has been one of my best Etsy customers for a long time, and she happens to live in SoCal. I suggested that she could save on the cost of shipping if we met for lunch and I just brought the mug to her, so that’s what we did. It was great to finally meet her!

Heather painted this mug when we all went painting when Lauren was in town, and I love how it turned out. It fascinates me how everyone’s dottery is unique. We’re all using the wrong end of the paintbrush, yet each person’s patterns are slightly different. Very cool how that works.

Okay, my inner geek is showing. The story behind this mug is kind of long. You can read more about it here; it helps if you’re a Star Trek: The Next Generation fan.

Captain Picard on ST:TNG used to order tea from the replicator all the time by barking out, “Tea, Earl Grey. Hot.” Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley Crusher on the show, is a famous blogger now and is selling mugs with this on them to promote a podcast he’s doing with commentaries/reviews of early ST:TNG episodes. Lauren told me about all this, and said she wanted to paint her own version of the mug. I thought it was a brilliant idea and wanted one too, except I hate Earl Grey tea. So I changed the last word on mine to “not.”

Here is the mug Lauren painted. I especially love the little Star Trek symbol she drew above her signature on the bottom.

I just realized I never got a photo of the first two dishes Lauren painted. Something was weird about the bisque or the glaze, and they turned a strange green color in the kiln. The pottery studio gave her a credit for the cost of the dishes and she painted these three to replace them. The one in the middle is for Lauren’s Japanese sister-in-law; I believe that’s her name on there. The other two are for Lauren and her mum.

Lauren had the idea for a mug that said, “I knit so I don’t kill people,” but she was so busy with her Earl Grey mug and the dotty dishes that she hadn’t even started painting it by the time Brenda finished her plate and had nothing to do. When she asked if anyone had something for her to do, Lauren asked if she wanted to paint this mug for her. Brenda painted all of it except the last part of the scarf. Her hand got tired so I finished the scarf, including painting it into the inside of the mug and adding the tassels.

Good thing I enjoyed crocheting all those rainballs for Bug’s party, because Claire H. saw them, remembered that she’d intended to order some snowballs from me last year, and asked if would like to crochet her some of each. I said I’d love to, since it gave me a reason to watch a few episodes of Dr. Who on Netflix Instant, both of which I’m loving. Thanks for that, Claire! Your snowballs and rainballs are in my shop whenever you’re ready

We got a postcard in the mail today from Troy, from Dubai. And by “we” I mean, clearly, our cats. Oh yes. Wanna see what he wrote on it?

Katy & Lily,
This place is a kitten’s dream! Three words for you:
World’s Largest Catbox
And this time of year, it is purfect!
xoxo,
Papa

If you’ve been following my Flickr photoset 180+ Photos for Troy, and you know that today was Day 179, you might be wondering if Troy is coming home tomorrow. But then you might notice that I added that plus sign to the name of the set.

Nope, Troy isn’t coming home tomorrow. I’m being vague about the actual date because of a little thing called national security. You’d be amazed (or maybe you wouldn’t, I don’t know) by the things Troy isn’t allowed to tell me, and the things I’m not supposed to publish here on this blog. You might notice I’ve never mentioned the name of Troy’s ship, for example. I don’t tell you where he’s been till after he’s been there. And I won’t mention the day he’s coming home till he’s here, probably. That’s just the way things are in a post-9/11 world. But don’t feel too bad for us; Troy will be home very soon. The rest of his shipmates won’t be home for a few more months, so we’re actually getting him back early. I’m counting that as a blessing and not getting upset about having to add a plus sign to the name of my photoset.

And very quickly after Troy gets home, we’re up and moving across the country again. We’ll have a few days to relax first. We hope to see most of our friends once more, we plan to take Annalie to Disneyland, we’ll eat at our favorite restaurants. The packers and movers will descend on our house like locusts on a field, quickly and efficiently wrapping and packing and boxing and taping, and taking most of our earthly possessions with them on a giant truck. We’ll follow a few days later: Troy, me, Annalie, my mom, both cats and the portable litterbox, driving across the country in our so-very-worth-it minivan, stopping once or twice to see family and friends along the way.

When we get there we’ll make ourselves comfortable in a hotel or base lodging before we start looking in the local classifieds and online for houses to rent and following up on the houses Troy’s already been researching from the ship. We’ll look at so many houses and neighborhoods in the span of a few days that they will all blur together. It’s all rather crazy but it’s also part of the routine of moving. I’ve been doing this every couple of years since I married Troy, nine days shy of my 21st birthday, and I kind of love it and look forward to it every time.

Of course I’ll miss it here. I’ll miss the sunny, warm winter days when we could go to the park in short sleeves and flip-flops. I’ll miss our fantastic house and the view from our deck and the palm trees and the bougainvillea. I’ll miss our town and our little mall with the pottery studio and all the fountains and the two-level Target. I’ll really miss all the good friends we have around here and I’m trying not to think about that just yet. I want to enjoy my last times with them, to hang out and talk and laugh with them, and not be dragged down by a heavy heart. So I’m putting those emotions off till after we’ve left. They are there, hovering around the edges, but I’m keeping them at bay for now.

And by the time I give those emotions free reign, Troy will be home. I’m pretty sure we’ll be so happy to have him with us again that we won’t spend much time being sad. Aside from being kind and thoughtful and just generally awesome, this is the guy who sends his cats postcards about how they’d like the desert because it’s the world’s biggest catbox, just because he knew it would make us laugh. He’s good at making people laugh, and he does it a lot. Even 3,000-mile road trips are a blast with Troy.

Hey, that reminds me! A while back I painted Troy a mug. He’d mentioned that he would like for me to paint him one, and I told him to let me know what he wanted, and then he got distracted and never did. And then I had a fantastic idea and painted him a mug to send him for Christmas. I never blogged it because I didn’t want him to see it and ruin the surprise, but he’s had the mug for a couple of months now so I think I can post the photos.

It’s a fact: Troy is awesome. I regularly thank him, after I’ve heard stories about someone else’s husband being obtuse or irresponsible or neglectful, for being awesome. I painted this mug half in serious tribute, half as an inside joke. And at least once, when Troy was carrying this mug down a passageway on the ship, someone read the mug out loud as he passed by and he was able to cheerfully say, “You’re welcome!” See? Like I said: AWESOME.