Painting, exhaustion, and obnoxious neighbors

This post is sans-pictures. Sorry. But it's a fun read, I promise...

You may or may not know that Hayley and I are paintin' it up at our place. We originally planned on painting all the walls in the two bedrooms, some touch-ups in the living room, and maybe painting the bathrooms. Well, we've done a little more than that, and will be very nearly finished with painting all the walls and ceiling (which I keep calling the roof for some reason) in the second bedroom, all the walls in our bedroom (looks freakin' AWESOME right about now), and instead of touch-ups in the living room, we're repainting the accent wall. My lovely wife has agreed to a dark, brownish, orange color. Am I or am I not the luckiest guy in the world?

With every night this week involving some iteration of painting, we have gone to bed quite tired. Last night was no exception, only because it is the weekend, our obnoxious neighbors--whom we refer to less-than-affectionately as the Drunken Sluts--were having yet another party.

As a side note, sorry Mom and Dad, but they deserve the nick name. Also, how embarrassed would you be to know your neighbors refer to you as drunken sluts?? They should be ashamed. But they have more than earned this nick name. Guys are over there at all hours of the day and night, they drink, smoke, make a general ruckus, and the place is like Grand Central Station... They're loud, vulgar, and all around obnoxious. But I digress. Moving on with the story...

So the Drunken Sluts have people over. Not unusual. Hayley usually puts on her sound machine, and the noise usually drowns out their partying. With the weather being nice, we leave the windows open rather than use the air conditioning, so our bedroom window aims right at their balcony. Where drunken sluttiness often ensues. Again, the sound machine helps, and when we fall asleep, we hope to never hear from them again. At least until the next weekend.

Last night was not one of those nights where we fall asleep and wake up much earlier than the hung-over party-goers at the Drunken Sluts' place. They went on and on, and when I did finally fall asleep, they woke me up at about 3 with more loud talking. I was annoyed, because we were planning on painting all day the next day (Saturday). While in that state of semi-sleep and anger, I started dreaming...

I dreamed that I called the cops on them. I dreamed that the dispatcher was less than helpful. The dispatcher told me to go outside and inspect things, and as I was narrating the ruckus, the Drunk Sluts and friends started to get the gist of what was going on, and retaliated. They were louder, and even shined a flashlight at our windows when we got back inside. This pissed dream Hayley off to no end, and she grabbed our big flashlight, and shined it back at the sonsa bitches. Then, one of the guys at the party tried to scale our balcony by jumping up the walls a la parkour (obviously inspired by premier episode of The Office that we watched last week), and I grabbed his hands as he dangled from the balcony and threw him off, where he crashed to the ground. I don't remember much else from the dream except the feeling of extreme anger and hatred for the Drunk Sluts and their guests, and some strong indignation at how unhelpful the dispatcher was, and exasperation at how slow the police were to arrive at the scene.

I woke up at about 3:45 a.m. after this dream to hear the neighbors STILL talking loudly. I was completely pissed. I pulled on the shorts I had painted in the day before, left our room, went to the balcony, and yelled at them to shut up, citing the time as "nearly 4 in the morning" and using a few other choice words. Turns out it was just one of the Drunk Sluts with some guy, out on the sidewalk, chatting it up like it was the middle of the day. The guy sheepishly apologized, promised they'd be quite, and he left like 5 minutes later. My outburst sorta got my heart rate up, woke up Hayley, and didn't really help us get back to sleep. On top of that, at about 4:30, ANOTHER rambunctious bunch--not from the Drunken Sluts' place, mind--staggered out of their condo and started hootin' and hollerin'. I was pissed, again. This time, another neighbor yelled at this group. They took a little longer to disperse than the two I yelled at, however.

So not a great night's sleep. In spite of this however, we got quite a lot of painting done today, and only have one(-ish) wall and we are done! Well, we'll still have bathrooms and a second coat on a bookshelf, but we're mostly done! I can't wait to see the finished product! (Hayley will take pictures, don't worry. In fact, see pictures of the second bedroom here.) It will be even cooler to see what it looks like with our new carpet!

So pardon me if I'm a little sleepy or groggy if you talk to me in the next few days. It's been a blast painting, we love the fruits of our labors, but we haven't slept as well as we'd like. ;) Here's hoping our neighbors don't need to be yelled at again tonight. Because I might actually make that call to the cops this time, and not just in my dreams.

It's the happiest day of the year!!!

Ok, maybe that's a stretch, but it's still exciting! For me, at least... it's National Punctuation Day. Who knew there was such a day, right? My mom actually sent the link, and it's pretty cool. If only I had known earlier! I might have been able to participate in the First National Punctuation Day Baking Contest! (Seriously. It's a real thing.) Now, if there was a National Punctuation Day Painting Contest, I think Hayley and I would have totally won... except that our painting had absolutely nothing to do with punctuation... but we used correct grammar while painting, with complete sentences like, "I freakin' love this color!" (While it is slang, the proper punctuation when ending an -ING word with the letter N is to replace the G with an apostrophe. Don't believe me? Check this out.)

If you'd like to learn more about my favorite punctuation mark, click here. You can also visit the home page and learn all about ellipses (not an instance when the moon moves in front of the sun, by the way), commas, brackets, question marks, semicolons, and more!

Ok, I'm a big dork. But I think it's pretty awesome there's a national day for punctuation.

I learned it by watching you!!

At least twice this week, Hayley or I have said "I learned it by watching you!" in an overly dramatic and pretend-sad voice. It happened again today on our drive home from Tori's place, so I thought I'd share it with you all. Remember this public service announcement from when we were kids? I always thought it was a little funny.



I think I thought it was funny mostly because I never imagined my parents--or any other grown up that didn't have physical signs of addiction, for that matter--even considered drugs. As a kid, I thought drugs were for kids who hated life, mostly. I realize that's a very immature way to think about it, and I got some better counseling and direction, but this ad still makes me laugh... But it's serious, folks. Say no to drugs.

Want more proof that I'm a dork?

Well, here it is.

You may have noticed on my sidebar over there that I've recently been posting books I've been reading lately. A feat re-undertaken because of Hayley's good influence on me, and I'm very grateful. I like to read. A lot. I even tried to start a book club once, and when that one died, I joined another. From then, I decided I really don't love book clubs, but still like to read. I'm getting to why I'm a dork...

So I've read a lot lately, and I'm in the middle of a really good book. We just picked up a book Hayley and I have both been anticipating, and I'm excited to read it, too! But before that happens, I'm trying to figure out which of the two books below I want read first:
















I know, I'm a dork. I want to brush up on my English skills. Part of it is because I like English. Part of it is because I want to make sure I'm still an alert writer and editor for work. but either way, I'm excited to read my grammar/English book next.

Picture day

Today is picture day at Hayley's school! Very exciting. But it mostly makes me think of this picture. :)


Happy picture day, Hayley!