The Laughing Housewife

I am still busy.  Once I had recovered from my train lag on Monday, I started decorating Tory Boy’s bedroom.  When he went to Lancaster last year the boys swapped rooms, including furniture and decor.  Spud’s new bedroom is okay, as it was decorated for his teenage brother; but TB’s new bedroom is only okay if you are four: planes on the carpet, cute animals on the walls, that sort of thing.  I have been intending to decorate it since last year but only got my act together last Monday.

I don’t particularly like decorating and I’m about as good at it as I am at cooking, so pretty dire, really;  but the Hub is not well enough to do it and the boys are uninterested.  It has been bothering me that TB still refers to the room he is in as his brother’s room, and I am determined to make it as nice as possible for him.  We have a carpet in the loft that will replace the baby one; I will swap some of the furniture;  and, to make it quick(ish) and easy for me, I am painting over the wallpaper this time, though I had to get a special dispensation from the Hub, who disapproves of doing things the quick(ish) and easy way if it’s not the right way.  He is so much of a perfectionist that he claims he’s not a perfectionist, only that he tries to be one.  It is why he will be forever ill with CFS/ME and I never will.  Sloppy is as sloppy does.

However, he has taught me well: preparation is everything, I know, so I emptied the room’s contents into Spud’s room, washed the woodwork, and took down all wall-mounted items like curtain rails.  Spud is coming home tonight and might be sleeping on the couch, as he has two rooms for the price of one at the moment.  TB’s bed is stored in the upright position, squeezed between two wardrobes and three thousand of TB’s books (the ones we had to wrench from his grasp when he went away, or face driving on the undercarriage), and Spud’s bed is covered with all of the boys’ clothes that they ever owned and won’t part with; trying to sleep on it would be an exercise in Night On The Wear Mountain.  Which reminds me: when my brother collected the children at the weekend, I discovered we are not related after all; I am obviously on the distaff side of royalty but he slept with a drawing pin in his bed on one mattress with one sheet, and didn’t feel a thing.  I wish it had been a practical joke on my part because I could have called this post The Princess and the Glee.

Before he left, he noticed the Hub’s miserable, dead bonsai trees.  For as long as I have known him, the Hub has been trying to grow bonsai.  He’s rubbish at it.  They all die.  It’s not a cheap hobby, either, what with special food, expensive pruning shears, keeping the room at an ambient temperature, not to mention the cost of buying them in the first place; or the seeds, languishing in a bowl in my airing cupboard and refusing to grow.  The Hub, bless him, keeps trying.  Little Brother said he should stop bothering; he took a look at the latest two and said, ‘It’s less bonsai, more bonsoir.’

Back to the decorating, because I have to get back to the decorating: it’s going well.  I have two coats up but it will need a third because the giraffes are peeping out.  There is a corner near the radiator that had peeling wallpaper and I had to strip some of it.  The wall is uneven as a result but it’s not a problem; I stick to my painting motto: slap it on thick and look away quick.  I’ll shove a wardrobe in front of it and no-one will be the wiser.  There are also lots of holes in the wall.  I took down shelves and an old cupboard but didn’t bother plastering over the gaps: that’s why man invented posters.