It just seemed to be one of those days … a renovation project on the go. Scrape off (popcorn) stipple from a bathroom ceiling, and repaint, how bad could it be? Tough, I’d done this once before, and knew it would be messy. Who put stipple on ceilings anymore? That was something my parents did in the seventies, not when this eight year old bathroom came into existence. Someone’s pocketbook chose this style, of drop white bits on floor every time you throw a towel on shower rod, over the more trendy resilient knock-down finish. I didn’t get it. Whatever, my goal was to remove the texture and repaint the ceiling. And I had already done the dusty deed of removal, to find a poor tape finish underneath. My redecorating research produced ye old rag roll paint technique—I anticipated the project could become creative.
Cover mistakes with a coat of paint. (Visions of Old & New Testament prophets warning against white washed sepulchres came to mind.)
Make your flaws work for you.
If you can’t hide it decorate it … various bits of wisdom that could be applied more easily than the paint, I came to realize.
My mother’s past words resurfaced: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.
I had been a rebel with that yardstick before, some things have to be done, and I’ve concluded that not everything is worth doing well. (Besides, how well is well? Perfectionism is over-rated.)
And this day had brought about it’s own disappointments … a friend’s heartache with love, my cappuccino machine stopped working, and news that another dear friend was quite ill … I had recently spent some excellent time with her. We’ve both drunk from the bitter cup run over with grief, and for her to now deal with major health issues seemed wrong in my books. And I am painting, and thinking of these two dear friends and the apparent unfairness of it all … I had picked blue and white for the bathroom colours, and somehow envisioned the vast prairie blue sky, and fluffy white clouds, that feel of things being right in the world … the blue was not deep enough, so I mixed a little dark in myself, only to have a stormy sky-ceiling. Next, the touch-up could have been my seven year old grand daughter’s work. Hmm …. Add more light blue … then dark blue … then white … roll off … dry paint on … step down from bathtub edge into paint tray … about five layers later … it looked not too bad … acceptable. Random symmetrical patterns are difficult to obtain … Does a sky with a perfect repetitive cloud pattern exist? No, the randomness would add.
After deciding the ceiling was okay, I searched for the sweet and salty pop-corn given me by the friend who’d been heavy on my mind, and thought of the popcorn prayers sent up for her throughout the day. The popcorn was nestled behind my red wines and as I reached for it, the bag caught the one full bottle and took it down … wine cracked onto floor, flowed and bubbled. Almost it was to laugh … the red liquid hurried under the fridge, 750 ml red wine lake on floor, kind of yeasty smelling. I threw one dish towel at it, and searched for an old beach towel.
Reminded self—don’t cry over spilled milk, this was a small issue, but one can whine a little over spilled Shiraz.

Well, at least this time my mother could be proud—I had done that one well, it was worth doing!