Armed and Unsupervised.

Jamie has been away, spending the weekend at car races and being generally guy-ish.
I look forward to this time. The house, I believe, does not. The house gets operated on when Jamie is gone. And I'm definitely not a qualified surgeon.

The last time he left me unsupervised, I ripped out the wall-to-wall carpeting in the hall and stairs and decided to electrocute myself (several times) while adding in some additional lamps to the track lighting.

The time before that, I pulled out the carpet downstairs (I'm apparently anti-carpet) and reupholstered two chairs (with pins, rather than sewing, so now they are booby-trapped).

The time before that I adopted a dog.

The time before that I left the oven on for three days.

You get the picture. Jamie never knows what he's coming home to. And the house never knows what my plan is, seeing as how I have several projects going all at once. Here was yesterday's scene, fueled by little more than ice cream bars, soy crisps, and pizza.

Area 1: The Stairs. Having pulled the carpet out, I had decided to fill the holes myself. After being told that you do it with woodfill (and not toothpaste; you aren't living in a dorm, Gretchen), I quickly applied the yellow paste with my hands (not the proper tool, I was later told). Yesterday, this area was in various states of sanding, cleaning, and painting.

Area 2: The Family Room. There was some general rug switcheroo going on as well as various areas of the trim being painted. Not all the trim, just some.

Area 3: The Patio Door. Armed with a paint sample from Home Depot, I decided it was enough to paint the door. It wasn't.

Area 4: The Kitchen. Here, too, there are various areas of trim being painted. Again, not all. Just some.

Area 5: My Bathroom. This is a general shedding effort. A large garbage bag sat in the middle of the floor and every hour or so, another cluster of bottles, tubes, containers, soaps, gadgets, etc. were evaluated, ranked and either thrown out or saved. This had to be done in about 12 passes, until such excuses as, "Oh, but I bought this expensive lotion four years ago when I got a small bonus from work for working a weekend" no longer meant I had to keep something which hadn't been used in five years.

Area 6: The Bedroom. Throughout the day, this room got rearranged several times until I found the "right" layout. Which is remarkably similar to the "original" layout.

Today we are going to mess with Area 7: The Living Room/Library.

The next time he goes away, it's the garage.....