Alternate title: Zoey the Explorer
After reading
Rachael's post about how she was going to wallpaper her bathroom, it inspired/
guilted me into finishing the painting project I started FIVE months ago. It was that, and I was tired of looking at the random swatches I had painted on the walls (and tired of people saying "Oh, are you going to paint?" when they saw all the swatches painted on the wall :)). In my defense, I did complete five rooms and the hallway when I started the project, but I never quite got around to painting the kitchen and living room (probably the two most difficult rooms in the house). I started looking around at all the things I wanted to do and furniture I wanted to move before having the baby, and I realized that I really needed to finish my painting so that I could get started on all these projects! So...Saturday I began the process/ordeal by taping and moving stuff (only light stuff...I made Eric move the heavy stuff), and things went pretty smoothly. I did encounter a few bumps along the way...mainly from this guy:
He started off the day being very good, but soon realized being good is boring so then he started following me around trying to sniff the paint and rub up against the walls. At one point, I found him pulling some of my painters tape off with his teeth. He also succeeded in knocking over the book shelf full of cds/dvds, breaking it, and putting a large hole in the wall. Needless to say, he is NOT on my good list right now. Shortly after I had cleaned up the mess from the shelf incident, we heard this one (see pic below) meowing her "I'm stuck...now come get me" meow.
Side note: This may make me the biggest crazy cat lady of all time, but I can tell from hearing a meow which cat it is coming from and what they want. I think it just makes me a good kitty momma, but it's probably more of a sign of how loopy I am.
I asked Eric to go look for her and check to see if she was maybe locked in the bathroom...nope. Upstairs in a closet....negative. After a frantic search, I spied an open vent where I had taken the cover off so I wouldn't have to tape around it. I quickly turned to Eric and said "You don't think she crawled into that vent do you?" Before he even answered, I knew that if any cat was inside the vent, it would be Zoey. She's our daredevil wild cat that is always trying to climb on top of doors, squeeze into tight places, or giving me heart attacks (and bites) when she wakes us up in the middle of the night dangling from a closet shelf. Also, she's the only one skinny enough to fit in a vent, which is probably why none of the other cats followed her lead. After several minutes of calling her and shaking a bag of treats near the opening, we began looking around to see how we could get her out. Eric went into the crawl space and started dismantling vents searching for her while I cried and contemplated who I was going to have to call...fire department, police department, animal rescue??? Fortunately, Eric found her in one of the vents and she was fine...it just may have shaved a few years off my life and gave me a few (more) grey hairs!
The rest of the painting went fairly smoothly, except for when we moved all the furniture back and Eric and I argued about whether to put everything back where it was or rearrange it. In the process, we broke the TV and the TV stand, accidentally of course. This resulted in another crying jag from me (stupid pregnancy emotions) and Eric agreeing with me just so that I would stop crying :)! Now that everything is (almost) back to where it should be, I love the new paint and am glad that it is FINISHED! All we have left to do is paint the nursery, but I'm going to give my body and my emotions a few weeks to recover before tackling that project :)!
Here's a sample pic of the color (Sherwin Williams Anjou Pear) we used for the kitchen and living room (they share a wall so we had to paint them the same color). This is not my actual living room...mine is no where near being in a photographable state!
