Surrender, Dorothy

Remember Being 20 Years Old?

So today I was on the Huffington Post, and I saw this blaring headline of Kristen Stewart's awkwardness.

I have no soft spot for Kristen Stewart. She just keeps saying the wrong thing. But as I'm watching this clip, I feel bad for her, because as she says something that she knows will be taken out of context, her face falls, and she says, "That's great. I know that one will follow me around for a long time." She basically grimaces as she sits down with David Letterman.

And God, I remember what it was like to be twenty.

When I was twenty, I was still in college. Fucking up on a pretty much daily basis. Barely ever having to live in an adult world at all -- not I! I remained happily ensconced in the delayed adolescence that is a Big 10 school until I graduated at 22.

When I was 20, I was a junior in college. I was in a sorority. I had a part-time job as a waitress. In a bar. I wore Doc Martins and lusted after bartenders and drank a lot of amaretto sours and margaritas that I bought for less than $2 at two-for-one happy hours. Sometimes I drank drinks mixed in the bathtubs of fraternity houses.

Sometimes I did that. Nobody ever asked me questions on television. No "adult" even looked my way twice.

And at 20? I liked it that way.

I smoked a pack a day and wrote angsty papers about interpersonal communication and bad poetry on napkins. I walked the mile to and from my house and campus every day with the Indigo Girls or Jimmy Buffett firmly clamped over my ears. I hadn't even discovered Tori Amos yet when I was 20.

So how can I judge Kristen Stewart, even when she's stupid enough to say she feels like she's being raped when she's photographed? When she says she doesn't know where her parents got their fucking dog?

If I were famous at 36 and David Letterman suddenly produced foamboard photographs of my childhood pets, I would run screaming from the soundstage at the invasion of my parents' privacy. Kristen, at least, attempted to explain.

It's so easy to sit in judgment of these starlets, and I admit, I do it, too. But there's something about Kristen that seems so real, so tapping-on-the-legs-while-doing-the-interview uncoached that I forget she's famous and I just identify with her, how weird this must all be for her, the little girl from The Panic Room.

I don't even like her all that much when I hear her give interviews. But I like how REAL she is in a world of fem-bots.

And I totally remember being 20.

For the Past Two Days, There Has Been a Shirtless Man on My Roof

He's nice. He and his partner are painting our house. But it just makes me think of this.

Because I'm twelve years old.

The Transformation of Chateau Travolta: Drywalling Over Door Frames

This year has been busy in terms of Arens Family Home Improvement. You might recall our February powder room remodel. Or our kitchen wallpaper stripping extravaganza. This past weekend, we planned to take out a wall only to find the night before it contained a duct. Lucky for us, Beloved pays attention to such things. I would've found the duct after splitting it wide open with a hammer.

It was a little bittersweet to learn the wall has a duct, because then it became apparent to me I've left a wall that could've been painted this entire time looking like this for the past four months.

See wall directly behind little angel. Yeah, we thought we were going to remove it. Shut up.

The really sad part is that it took about 20 minutes to remove that wainscoting and strip the rest of the wallpaper backing off, making it look completely normal. Until I painted it the wrong color.

Here you see the stripped wall minus its trim. Beloved is going to make the sides of the wall just drywall and add an arch to the top. Soon.

So, the rest of the kitchen and the powder room are "Egg White." I found paint that said "Eggshell" and remembered it had been egg something. As I was pouring the paint, I mentioned to Beloved it was so totally the wrong color. He assured me it was the right color. Here, Beloved: 0, Rita: 1.

Screw it. We'll just pretend that's primer, shall we?

We'd hoped to take that whole wall out to open up the space between the kitchen and the living room. But sometimes you have to know when to back away.

Beloved also drywalled over a door frame to give us more room when we do our kitchen remodel.

Before:

Oh, hi, 2007. That's the library with piss-splattered carpet and recently removed horrible wainscoting and wallpaper. You can see the country roses on either side of the door.

Minus country rose wallpaper.

Plus white trim and EGG WHITE paint.

Plus hot man and drywall over that door frame.

EGGSHELL.

EGG WHITE.

Beloved is quite brilliant, as you can see how much space this will give us for a coffin-sized pantry in which we can hide entire people or a whole shitload of food.

Unfortunately, I also screwed up a paint color.

Drywall patch over old door frame.

Getting ready to sand the drywall. Everything we know about home improvement we learned from Dexter. (Actually, doing this totally reduces drywall dust. As in there was none on the bookcases after I sanded.)

Primed.

Beloved insisted this was the wrong color as I had just painted it. I was all, "No, it's totally not." And he was all "What would you like to bet?" So we made a bet. It was the wrong color. Beloved: 1, Rita: 0.

Nothing a short trip to Sherwin Williams couldn't fix. Humph.

So there you have it! As though that silly door was never there! More to come on the kitchen wall when we install the arch.