A Pair Of Woodpeckers

Since I didn't see any backyard wildlife yesterday I was happy to see this female Downy Woodpecker while doing yoga this morning.  It was cold, 7 degrees, but sunny.  I only went out for the newspaper and to check the mail.  Seven is just too cold.

Then, not long after the female came, there was the male Downy Woodpecker on the suet cakes in just about the same spot.  There were squirrels on the fence too but none of them came to the feeders.  That I saw anyway.

 

I spent most of the day knitting.  I dug around downstairs to find some pretty sock yarn, dialed up my favorite sock pattern on Knit Companion, and got knitting.  I forget how skinny sock yarn is and how small the needles you knit socks on are.  I've got about five more inches of sock leg to knit before anything interesting, like the heel, happens.

 

Since I have zero confidence that I'd manage to knit on the sock without screwing up at Friday Night Knitting (Zoom edition) tomorrow, I started another cast sock so that I can just knit 2, purl 2 around and around without too much thinking.

 

I had high hopes for a pretty sunset tonight but thick clouds rolled in this afternoon so all we had was a gradual dimming of the light, not pretty orange and pink colored sky.

28 January--Barbara Malcolm, The Seaview.

Chapter 40

Monday was spent in the happy kind of chaos.  Luke and Stanley were glad to be asked to help Marie get the shutters up so she could take pictures for the website.  While they installed the shutters, I asked Marie and Elizabeth to help me decide which color to paint each of the bedrooms and the bathrooms. 

I called Luke and Stanley down from their perch under the eaves where they were scraping the outside of the Seaview.  I explained how I wanted the lobby painted white with a wide stripe with each of the five colors circling the room at the top of the walls, then going up the stairs.  At each room door one color would peel off to be the walls of that room.  The bathrooms would be white with green trim or green with white trim.

All of the men nodded as I explained my painting plan and then Luke said, “What color you want the lobby painted, Mrs. Rose?” 

I didn’t roll my eyes.  Hadn’t I just explained how I wanted the entire hotel painted?  I took a deep breath.  “White, I want the lobby painted white. But first we have to prime the walls.  I have two five-gallon pails of interior primer in the container. You have to use that first so the paint sticks to the walls.  Without it the paint will peel right off in the sea air.”  I could see that primer was a new idea for the men.

Stanley said, “You mean we gots to paint everything twice?” 

“Yes,” I nodded, “if we don’t prime the wallboard the paint won’t stay.”

He elbowed Stanley. “That explains why your sister’s paint is falling off her ceiling. That new board didn’t get primer.”  They nodded once and left to get the painting supplies from the container.

Silas motioned me into the kitchen.  “Mrs. Rose, I like your plan, but I think you need to paint a bit of the wall color in each room to tell Stanley and Luke what color to use.  Once the paint is dry then we can paint the stripes.”

“But first it all gets primed in white,” I reminded him.

“Yes, first the primer, then the paint.” 

In two days, the priming was done, and the real painting began.  I took Silas’ advice and painted a small square in each room of the color I wanted the walls.  I decided that the trim in each bedroom would be white, but the bathrooms would be the opposite of each other. 

It took another conversation to convince Luke and Stanley that the primer didn’t count as paint.  I’d bought semi-gloss paint which was easily wiped of dirt and marks; primer didn’t have that capability. 

When the lobby paint was dry a few days I measured out a wide strip down from the ceiling and divided it into five equal sections.  Silas took out the green painters’ tape and got to work. we taped it so that we could paint the top, bottom, and middle stripes without having to move the tape and I spent an hour debating the order of the colors, finally settling on turquoise, yellow, lilac, peach, and green.  When we peeled off the tape Silas was amazed that none had leaked under, that the edges of the paint were straight. 

“It’s the tape,” I told him. “There’s something in or on it that keeps the paint from leaking under it.” 

He dug into the trash bucket to find the wrapper.  “Can I keep this?” I nodded assent. “I want to show it to Matthew at the hardware; he needs to put it on his shelves.  It is a miracle.”

I laughed.  “Not quite a miracle, just advanced technology. Sure, you can take him the end of this roll if you want.” I handed him what I held with less than a quarter inch of tape left on it. “That way he can see for himself how much better it is than the blue stuff.”

 

Today's toss was another flannel shirt, the last flannel shirt, I promise.  Which means that tomorrow I'll be down in the basement looking for more things I can live without.

The prompt today was: how would you save the World?  Such a question.  Where do you go with that?  There's so much about the world that needs saving, I had trouble figuring out where to begin.  But I managed.

--Barbara