Paint Space

Last Friday I drove over to Carrie’s house to clean out space for my painting studio. It’s a brick garage area adjoining her house.

Kim, bless her lovely heart, gave me the studio as a Valentine’s Day gift. Even more generous of her was the time she allotted for me to go paint. Two days marked per month, as a bare minimum, and her insistence that that was, in fact, a minimum—that I paint more often than that.

She arranged with Carrie for me to go over and look around and pick out a spot to set up. She has a lot of room.

The area I cleaned was, and still is, used for firewood storage. It had lots of dust, sawdust, leaflitter, and cobwebs. I tried to get the adjoining bathroom in working order, but had problems with the pipes. The cold water now works in the sink, but I had to turn everything else off due to leaks. Carrie said she’d have a plumber check it out since she already planned to call one for other purposes in the near future.

The cleaning darn near killed me. I was sneezy and congested on Friday night, but it got much worse the next day. That is the usual pattern for me. Mow or rake or clean one day, and I sneeze and feel a little bad. The next day I’m usually miserable, then more or less back to normal the day after.

Saturday and Sunday I felt like my lungs were over-full vacuum-cleaner bags. Bags from a vacuum-cleaner that had accidentally sucked up several live cats. Speaking from the point of view of my sinuses, lungs, and nose, it was a nasty, nasty weekend.

Today, Tuesday, I am mostly better. I still feel a little rattle when I breathe, and I’m coughing a bit. My nose whistles from time to time.

Fortunately, I think my studio space is in workable shape. I can take stuff over there and paint.