Everything was going fine. Scott and I had a relaxing morning, and a nice breakfast of green chiles and eggs, (even if the bacon was a little burned). The morning started out gray and snowing, but it cleared up and was warm by the time we leisurely left the house and went down to the music store where I teach. The building is very old and the paint inside is hideous: yellow thoroughly polluted with dirt, smudges, rust and stains. My room no longer looked quite yellow, but sort of a putrid sulfurous puce. It was, but no longer. I started painting it a pale peach last week.
It's handy having a 6'4" boyfriend when you want the top of the wall painted next to the ceiling. Scott did a great job, even though he haughtily refused to use my nifty flat brush made expressly for that purpose. "Maybe you can take it back," he said. "Grrrrrr," I said.
Because there was a piano lesson going on in the next room, I left Sofia in the car while we worked. Eventually we got as much done as we could and some drying time was needed. After we ate at a Chinese buffet, Scott declared he'd had enough painting and went home to doodle around with old trucks and heavy equipment in the late evening sunlight.
I went back to my room at the store with the idea of doing some of the contrasting colors on the trim. There were a couple walls that needed another coat, but I really wanted to get the light spring green on the trim to liven things up and look nice for my students on Monday. I reasoned that all the walls were covered and it would look more "finished" with the trim on. I brought Sofia up with me since no one else was there. She'd been great when I painted the walls last week. No Labrador she! Nope, she didn't try to drink the paint, or poke her nose on the wet walls. She was perfectly well-behaved and had only one tiny bit of peach on the tip of her brush tail where she wagged a little too close to a wall, and the tiniest little bit on the tip of her right ear from lying down too close to the same wall.
I carefully opened the big can of spring green paint, and using the tiny little flat trim brush, scooped some into a small container. I finished the trim around the closet, the door, did some on the baseboards....worked my way around the room to the windows....up one window, down the other side, did the windowsill....moved on to the other window... Squatting on the floor by the second window I momentarily set down my little container of paint to work some hair or fuzz or something off the trim when I heard Sofia come up behind me and heard a little noise and saw a paw print right in the middle of my paint container and Sofia dashing across the carpeted room away from me and leaving nice, bright green paw prints everywhere.
Half the room was covered in a drop cloth. I jumped up and called her and she dashed out the door of the room just as I grabbed her leash. Now she was dancing around in circles leaving little green footprints.
You have to understand something about Sofia. She is very touchy about her feet. We recently had a very difficult toe-nail clipping episode at the vet wherein we had to hold her down, finally. She gave in very quickly, but BEFORE she gave in she did the best imitation of Wild Animal Freaking Out you have ever seen. Complete with screaming.
Luckily the sink is by the door of the room across the hall. I grabbed a paper towel, wet it (while she's dancing footprints all over) and leaned down to wipe her foot off. You could practically see the light bulb flash above her head. DANGER DANGER BAD FOOT THING! MUST FREAK OUT NOW! And she started lunging all over like a mad thing, leaving footprints everywhere she goes. I've got her leash and try to grab her green foot, wipe it off and grab more towels at the same time. After five extremely long minutes of the Crazy Coyote Act I figure with the carpet alone it's GOT to be all blotted off by now!
After another few vain attempts at swiping off her foot, she finally stopped leaving footprints everywhere. I took a bottle of cleaner and a wad of paper towels, firmly shut Sofia out of the room, and attempted to clean off all the lovely decorations from the carpet. Tomorrow I'll head into work early with a can of Goof Off to finish the job.
I'd meant to do all the trim, but this kind of put the kibosh on things as far as I was concerned. I didn't need peach AND green AND pink footprints all over.
Meanwhile I kept finding wet green paint on myself, on my hands, my pants, my purse...god knows where else....so back to get more paper towels. You every try to dry off latex paint? It doesn't just wipe off, it smears, and you are less wet, but you still have paint on you, so you wipe some more, and some more and it takes a while.
I grabbed Sofia, locked up and went out the door. It was ten feet to my car....over wet, melty snow. I open the car door, Sofia jumped in and onto my parka in the back, leaving wet, green footprints all over the seat, my jacket, my parka, the car....
Now I look at my hands because by golly, they feel wet again! And guess what? There is green paint on the leash, too! I made a concerted effort not to touch my face or my hair and got into the car.
Sometimes it's good to be slob. I had old newspapers on the floor that I whipped up onto the passenger side seat. I had numerous napkins stashed from various meals that I used to try to grab Sofie's feet with, and wiped my off. Again.
When we got home there was a lot more snow to traverse, so I took her on a tour of the yard and tried to get her to hunt for voles or rabbits, digging in the snow, something she always does. Well, except for today, of course. If I could get her to dig in the snow, it would clean off her foot.
"Look Sofie, a mouse hole, look!" I said, pointing out a place she would have dug IF I hadn't needed her to clean her feet off.
Well, we walked around and eventually she wasn't leaving any green marks, and you will be relieved to know that the beige carpet inside is green-free.
