I See a Green Door and I Want it Painted White

So the house didn't sell over the summer like I expected it to. My plans are to put it back on the market next year and try again. I'd have left it listed but for the fact that I refuse to move to Chicago in the winter. Anyway, I was sitting around thinking about how I would make things a bit easier next time, and I decided that the house needed a paint job. I could hire somebody to do it at a prohibitive price, or I could do it myself. Hire somebody, do it myself. Hire somebody, do it myself. It was a hard decision until I started thinking about it. I mean, how difficult could it be to slap some paint on the house. Well yesterday I started the painting, and I found out. It's a hard job. The first thing I decided to do was paint the doors.

This is how it went. I took the giant five gallon bucket of paint and tipped it so as to pour the paint into the roller pan. It sort of got away from me and paint gushed all over the place. When I finished hosing paint off of the porch and sidewalk, I started on the task of painting door number one. After what seemed like an hour of painting, I stood back to admire my work. It looked awful. I was painting Frost White over a dark green, and it was obvious that I would have to do two coats of paint. I moved on to the second door as I swatted the mosquitoes in the mid-day heat and humidity. Again, it took what seemed to be a much longer time than anticipated, and as I turned to do door number three it started raining. It was not one of those gentle rains, but a cloud burst, a deluge, a wall of water that suddenly came crashing down. Now it was not just hot and humid, it was sticky hot and humid. My shirt and shorts were soaking wet even though I was on the  porch and protected from the rain. I worked on through the rain and the heat. I covered the windows with masking tape, I rolled paint over the broad flat spots, and I meticulously pulled a small brush down along the edges. I then had to go back and put the second coat on all the doors. After what seemed like many hours of work, I stopped and cleaned everything up. I was so  proud of myself, I had put in a full day of work. Or so I thought, until I looked at the clock in the living room.

"What the hell? I've only been working for three hours?" I asked nobody in particular. I was tired, I was beat, and I was covered in sweat and mosquito bites. How could I have only been out there for three hours? And then from out in the kitchen Mark called to me.

"Alan, I made you a lunch. Eat it before you go back to work."