We bought new paint for the hallway way back in the spring, intending to get the job done before my mom came over in July. Of course, apart from the handful of large test blotches I slapped up here and there, it was same tired, old paint that’s been there since just after we moved in that greeted her when she arrived.

Having missed our first target, we thought instead that we’d do the painting during my mom’s visit, when she was here to entertain the kids and Olof was on vacation. And those five weeks passed with nary a brush stroke applied.

Once the kids got back to school, I thought. Then I’d have plenty of time to devote to painting, and we’d have a fresh-looking hallway in no time. Yeah, right.

I finally got a start on it a week or so ago when Olof told me that the clock I’d moved in there didn’t work with the existing paint (no, there’s no latent interior designer in that tech-geek we know and love–more’s the pity–it’s just that the color of the clock and the color of the paint are too similar and the clock isn’t easily visible against the wall). Not wanting to find a new home for the clock (we have some thirty clocks in this house, so it’s not that easy finding a vacant space when I buy a new one, and oh, I do buy new ones), I figured I might as well bust open a paint can.

So I’ve been sort of half-assedly painting the entry and stairwell for the past several days. There’s not much rhyme or reason to the way I go about a job like this (not much method and a whole lot of madness, some might say), but I reckon I’ve got a fourth, or maybe even a third, of it done. The wall with the clock is completely finished, the masking tape pulled off and the coat hooks re-mounted, even. It looks pretty spiffy, if I do say so myself.

And I’m the only one who will be saying it, for a while at least. All of my photo-editing software got messed up when we did a system upgrade a couple of days ago, which means no pictures for you, my lovelies. I’d promise that I’ll have some posted soon, but my track record speaks for itself, unfortunately. You’ll see’ em when you see ’em, is the best I can give you.