The Zen of cutting [walls]

To My Youngers,

The other day El and I took to painting two of the rooms in our loverly house. Now it perhaps goes without saying (for those of you who know me, and perhaps only for those of you who don't know El) that we had some pretty awesome colours picked out. Well, one loverly yellow (standing int he room is like standing inside of a fresh pad of butter :o) and one an almost rosy white (a boring colour normally but El has big plans for bright accent colours, sheets, curtains etc) but the rest of the house has mango, bright turquoise, soon-to-be dark blue and possibly a robin's egg in the near future...

As usual the my painting partner took on the rollering and the task of cutting the walls fell to me. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, 'cutting' is the process of outlining the walls with paint. In other words making straight lines where the paint meets the ceiling, floor, doors and walls, and coating the corners where the roller can't reach. Its a process that takes a steady hand an a distinct ability to make a paintbrush do what you want it to do, and its one of the few things i have absolutely no problem admitting I am fantastic at. No, seriously! I am! I did house painting for two summers during university and we used to finish jobs literally twice as fast as we were 'supposed' to simply on the strength of my excellent cutting skillz. And I do mean excellent. No tape, to warbles (ok well, sometimes warbles if I know no one is gonna be able to see it... ) and no drips on carpet (drips on hardwood or linoleum or tiles are fine cuz its faster to just wipe them up before they dry!). And its not just that I'm good at it, I kind of really love doing it too!

Theres something about having a simple task that you know you can absolutely kill, and then just go, go, going with it. Putting on the music (in this case 90s punk music, I'm currently having a bit of a punk revival and El agrees with me that it is absolutely the best music to paint to), filling your little becel tub full of paint, getting on the snazzy bandanna and possibly coveralls (though in this case it was my pyjamas...) and painting. Painting. Straight. Lines. That is all.

Its strangely Zen...

Normally the things in my life that allow me this amount of focus involve getting lost in an episode of west wing, an Agatha Christie book, or a vlogbrothers video, but like biking down the canal on a warm summer's day, painting ceilings and corners makes me feel the kind of calm that makes the world feel like the most perfect place that ever could have existed.

So when my friend asked me if I would help him paint his whole house next week (for the low low payment of pizza and beer) and I jumped at the chance, I'm not sure that he knew he was almost doing me a favour... I think I'll leave it that way though, I don't want to make him feel that the pizza and beer are unwelcome ;o)

-E