One Shade Of Grey.

You know what's fun about painting? You get to see just how dirty the tops of your door frames are. It's lovely really. Don't look up there. You'll be forced to spend the next month cleaning and wondering how you've managed to live in such squalor all this time.

TC and I currently live in an apartment that is in a big tri-plex that we own. There are three floors, each with an apartment. We rent the first and third floors and live on the second floor. It's a pretty basic apartment - two bedrooms, a bathroom, laundry room, kitchen, dining room and living room. I've lived here for almost three years and do you know how many times I've painted the entire apartment? Four. FOUR. That's like eight million gallons of paint and five thousand paint brushes.

The place was all kinds of horrible when I moved in - shades of red and orange in the living area with a random beige kitchen and chocolate bathroom thrown in for good measure. So I painted most of it tan. And hated it. So then I painted it green. Then mint green. And really hated that. So now it's grey.

Grey, grey, grey. The entire place is now a beautiful light grey. In the past three days I've painted every inch of the apartment except the living room. That's on the docket for tomorrow.

I haven't completely lost my mind. No, we've just bought another house and are now trying to rent our apartment. I've learned that apartments rent better when everything is a nice bright neutral. Nobody wants my baby blue kitchen or pea green bedroom.

Oh, man. I'm making my house sound like a deranged rainbow ransacked it. 

Anyway, the other part of the reason that I paint more than anyone else on the planet is because I love doing it. Yes, I love the feeling of a fresh, clean room. But what I really love is putting on my headphones and completely zoning out for hours on end. The music makes me happy. I have an epic playlist that is full of all my favorite songs and I know every single word. My bad taste in music knows no bounds and I have a memory of steel...especially for song lyrics. 

For the past million years my two friends, Allison and Morgan, and I have been playing a game called Lyric Badass. The rules are simple. When an old high school song comes on my iPod I text the two of them a line from the song. They have to think quickly to figure out the song and then get back to me with next line to the song. The first correct answer gets to be the reigning badass. Ridiculous, right? But oh so much fun. We play sporadically - usually when I'm either painting or on a road trip or anything else that lets me listen to music for extended periods of time. 

For instance, we haven't played in months and Allison and I haven't talked in weeks but tonight when I sent a text that only said, "Cause I'm cooler than a polar bear's toenail..." it took her about two seconds to come back with the next line by Outkast. It's amazing how well those high school memories imbed themselves in music and stay with you forever. 

I really should make a trophy for our little game. Or maybe a crown! With jewels!

Oh, maybe I can make a paper crown and paint it with all the left over wall colors I have in the basement...

See, I knew that baby blue from the kitchen would come in handy again.