Where does the bin man live?

Today I took Hannah to Bunnings to get some new heat lights for the bathroom.  It is FREEZING in there!  The current bulbs have been in there at least 20 years and when they died, no one ever changed them, they just left them in there, all dead and useless.  Humph.  I like to be warm, rather than cold, wet, and bedraggled and on the verge of getting frostbite when I step out of the shower ,thank you very much.

Anyway, I spotted a pink set of drawers that would be great for Hannah’s socks and things for the bargain mark down price of $15 bucks.  Done.

We got it home and Hannah decided she wanted to open it.  She ran to her playroom and fetched a little pink and blue plastic toy knife.

“Need a knife!” she told me.

Trying to open it with her little plastic knife

She poked and prodded at the plastic packaging with the “knife”, unable to free the lovely pink drawers inside.

She flipped it over and tried the other side.  No luck.

She flipped it on its side.  No luck.

She got frustrated and wanted a real knife.  I opened it for her with my finger nail instead.

“Hannah open it!  Hannah need a knife!”  She yelled.  It was nearly nap time, so she was starting to get cranky.  She somehow snapped her toy knife in half.

“Oh no, broke the knife!” She told me with a sad look on her face, tears threatening to escape. “Mommy fix it.”

“No sweetie, it can’t be fixed, we’ll have to throw it away.”

“Put it in the bin!”  Hannah said excitedly.  She really likes putting things in her bin (that’s garbage can for those Americans reading this).

Hannah: “Bin man take it.”  FYI, the bin man is the garbage man.

Me: “Where’s bin man going to take it to?”

Hannah: “Bin man’s house.”

Me: “Where does the bin man live?”

Hannah: *points to cupboard* “in THERE!”

Me: “Oh, he lives in the cupboard?”

Hannah: “YEAH!!!  In the cupboard!”

Me: “Where does Daddy live?”

Hannah: “In Daddy’s cupboard!”

Kids are so funny!

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There’s paint on my pants

“You’ll regret putting those posters on the wall someday when you have to clean all the blu-tack off and paint the wall!” Grandma told The Jess back in the day when she was a tween, plastering posters of ugly band members on her wall.  And ceiling.

“No I won’t!  I’ll fix it I promise!”

10(ish) years later:

“Um…we need some paint.”

The sales girl with the green fringe looked at us, unimpressed.

“We need some of this colour *holds up paint swatch* and some of this colour, and then this one for the trim.”

Everyone was looking at us.  Maybe we were ordering wrong.  Or maybe it was the fact that we were both wearing cute little sundresses in Bunnings.  Ok, it was probably because we clearly had no idea about painting.

“Do you need acrylic paint?”

“Um….”  Judging by the look The Jess was giving me, she had no idea either.

“Well the trim is shiny, but the walls aren’t.”  We’re so helpful and knowledgable.  “Where do we find painting stuff?”

Quizzical look from Green Fringe.

“Rollers and um…whatever else we’ll need.  Do we use rollers?”

$220 (of The Jess’ money.  It was her room, her walls, her damage, her promise) later, we had everything we needed.

This weekend:

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“You need to put something on the floor to protect it.”

“Grandma, I bought something for it, stop fussing!”

“Have you got all of the rollers and brushes and things you’ll need?”  Grandma means well, but seems to need constant reassurance that you are not going to accidentally kill yourself and/or anyone else/the house/the car/anything really.

“Grandma!  Go away, it’s all under control.”  The Jess was on a mission to prove that contrary to family belief, she is actually an adult.

*Gagging noise (how do you spell that?)* “Ew, this blue tack remover stuff is disgusting.  It’s getting in my mouth!” I said to The Jess.

“Maybe you should stand under it when I spray.” Good point.  But it didn’t remove the icky taste in my mouth.  It was kind of like how your mouth feels after you eat one of those cough drops that make your mouth a little numb.

The painting wasn’t so bad, but cleaning all the walls pretty much sucked.  The Jess sure knows how to ruin walls.  Not that I’m one to talk.  When I was an annoying tween, I put my ribbons (from equestrian events) all over my bedroom walls.  Not

My room growing up. This was before all of the photos on the closet started to overlap. Yeah, I know, I was still in my awkward phase....

with Blu-tack, as would have probably been smarter.  No, I used push pins.  Hundreds of them (I have hundreds of ribbons).  When we first moved into the brand new house (after living in a mobile home, ok, trailer, until I was in 4th grade.  Yes, I am trailer trash), I was specifically told “Don’t put anything on your walls!”  I listened for a while, but the white walls were just so boring.  My room needed a bit of Sheri-fying.  I started slow, one push pin on one side of the wall, another on the other side, a piece of fishing line in between, with some of my best ribbons hung on the line.  This little decoration didn’t get much of a reaction, so I put another line up.  Then another.  Then I found the fishing line arrangement all too hard and started using push pins for each individual ribbon.  It wasn’t long before every square inch of my wall was covered with ribbons (and hundreds or push pin holes).  There was no room left on my walls, so I put all of my photos on my closet doors.  I didn’t have any blu-tack, so I used brace wax (as in, wax that you put in your braces so they don’t cut up your mouth).  It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now that my photos have all been removed from my closet door, it’s not such a pretty sight.  With my closet door and walls completely covered, I started on my bedroom door.  I was a little bit naughty as an annoying teenager and used to take funny stickers off of anything and everything.  Yes, steal them.  My favorite was the “Doo Doo Only” sticker from a dumpster like bin at the fairgrounds that was for, well, doo doo.  My bedroom door became my canvas for my unusual sticker collection.

Ok, that was a bit of a tangent, but point of the story is, like The Jess, I too made that promise to my parents: “Don’t worry, I will fix the walls and doors!”  But now I live in a different country, so 10 years later, they are still waiting.  At least The Jess actually came through on her promise.  Plus her walls weren’t half as bad as mine.

“What kind of paint did you use?”  Grandma was fussing again.

“Um….”  I think we’ve established that The Jess and I really had no idea, we just used what Green Fringe gave us as per our request (“it has to be anti-mold, and washable”).

“The rollers are soaking in turps, if it’s water based paint, you don’t soak them in turps.”  I don’t know how Grandma knows things, but she does.

“Um….”  Jess started looking at the can.

“It’s acrylic.  No, it’s oil based.  No, it’s water based.  I don’t know!”

“It says you can wash unused paint down the drain, does that mean it’s water based?”  Seemed logical to me.

“Ummm…”

“See if you can wash it off your hands easily, if you can, then it’s water based.”  Grandma’s fountain of knowledge poured out again.

“I think it’s water based.  No, it’s oil based.  No, it’s water based.”  Yeah, we’re awesome.

It was water based  But if water based paint can be washed with water, then how can you wash the wall if, say, a cheeky little monkey called Hannah draws on it?  I’m skeptical.

We’re not finished yet (I will post some after photos when we are), we still have to do the ceiling and trim/molding (whatever it’s called), but it’s looking quite nice.  Next time, I will make sure I don’t pull out a wedgie (my butt likes to eat my underwear, what can I say?) when I have paint on my hands, and I will wash paint out of my hair before it dries.  You learn something new every day….