I'll admit it. I'm a daddy's girl. I am unabashedly, unashamedly, 100% my father's daughter. Since it's father's day, I've been thinking about what that means to me.

My father is young. Younger than most of my friends' dads ever were. What this means, is that to some extent, we grew up together. When I look back on my childhood, I have memories of sitting in dad's lap, steering the green(read:avocado) Volkswagen Beetle we had, while he worked the pedals. I remember trips to the park with my new walkie talkies(how DID we survive before cell phones?). I remember sleeping in the backseat while my mom drove him in the dark to the base, so he could spend several months on a submarine. I remember his fingers working magic on his Gibson six string acoustic, his vocal cords not quite so magical(sorry dad!). He taught me how to ride a bike. I walk like he does. I look like him. Several of my children have very distinctive features of his. I am tempered like him, much to my mother's chagrin. His is the approval I am always seeking, the yardstick by which all other men are measured.

Now, don't get me wrong. There are certain topics we skirt around, due to a mutual hotheadedness and strength of opinion. It's an unspoken agreement that we just simply cannot agree on politics, or any issue really, that has any connection, no matter how remote, to politics.

But, politics notwithstanding, the older I get, the easier our rapport gets. However, make no mistake, no matter how old I get, I will still always be the little girl, seeking daddy's acceptance, and he'll always be, my daddy. Which is kinda funny, since I'm only 19 years younger than him, so we'll actually be senior citizens together .

Today was the official day to honor our fathers, but I hope my father knows, that I wake up every day, hoping to honor mine. It's the least that he deserves.

Hmmm, where to begin.



Well, we are once again deeply embroiled in home renovation. Our house has gorgeous antique woodwork around all the doors and windows, offset by this rubbery, textured(think shoe tread) pastel nightmare that somebody actually paid money for, and then went to the trouble of installing, wallpaper. So, yours truly decides that the way to go, is RED PAINT. Yep, red. Not wishy washy pinkish red, or orange red, but no-kidding, true red.

As usual, the project we started out to do, and what we actually ended up doing are M I L E S apart. Because, as it turns out, once again we are foiled by 100 years of Do-it-yourselfers. We began removing wallpaper. Okay, not so bad, not nearly as many layers as I expected. Underneath the shoe tread, was plain white. Cool, we can just take off the top layer, and paint the white.



Uh-huh, not in MY house. DH brought home some helpful devices from a helpful co-worker, which essentially forced us to take it all the way down to the plaster. So, here's the breakdown. Under the white, was this (textured, again) olive green(think "avocado") paper. It even had a faux crown molding in, get this, GOLD. Oooh, how classy.

Underneath that was the plaster.



Okay, first BIG problem. As DH was spraying on the helpful wallpaper remover with the helpful garden sprayer(sans face mask, as clearly labeled on the back, D'oh!) the remover began to seep up onto the ceiling, which as it turns out, is ALSO covered by the white wallpaper. WTF? Okay, well, we'll deal with the ceiling later.



First, the primer. Then, the first and second layers of paint. I would like to point out, that during all of this, I was in Louisiana visiting family with the baby. So I was not present when the type of paint was chosen(demi-gloss). Props to DH for thinking of the fact that I complained the entire time we rented about the matte, white paint that was impossible to wipe the dirty handprints and boogers off of. So, I came home, after a week of R&R, to a shiny, red living room. It looked like a strip joint. In fact, there is a local strip joint called Visions that was painted the exact same way a few years back.

Now, mind you the color is gorgeous, albeit, shiny. So, we (read: I) decided to go over it with the same color, but in eggshell. Which is one of the two steps between matte and demi-gloss. I have to say, not once did DH gripe when we(read: I) decided to do this. So, here I sit, in my Victory Red living room, with eggshell sheen, and antique woodwork, and I am very pleased. It looks almost velvety. And the wood has really been brought out. All that remains now is the raggedy-ass wallpaper that is hanging from the perimeter of the ceiling(again, WTF?), but that will be another story, for another day.



Anyway, I said all that to say this. I have the bestest DH EVER!