I only, just today, realized that I have puny arms. Noodley arms, really. And not linguine arms or even spaghetti arms, but more like those rice noodles you get in a packet of Top Ramen. It’s not that I ever thought my arms were super buff, but I had no idea just what a weakling I am. I even do weights at the gym, but apparently, setting the weight to lowest possible level and then struggling to get in just a few reps doesn’t build muscles up all that quickly.
As I’m sure I’ve mentioned, we’ve been sanding the walls of our house. We’ve been sanding them for months and we only just today finished the living room, which means we are approximately 9% done. In about 15 years, we should have lovely smooth walls. Our walls have very heavy orange peel texture, covered by very many coats of very thick, glossy paint. We have a lot of wall. And a 5″ orbital sander. You see why it’s taking us a while.
We’ve been taking turns sanding, and it’s quite obvious who has done what. I lean into the wall, use every bit of strength in my arms, and put my full weight into it, and you can barely tell I’ve done anything. I also have to stop and rest about every three seconds because my arms start burning from the heat of a thousand fiery suns. Noodle arms.
There’s the added complexity that our living room walls are about 25 feet high and I’m terrified of heights. The idea of standing at the top of a rickety extension ladder while using a vibrating power tool that could jiggle the ladder right out from under me (what? It could happen!) strikes total panic in my heart. Which means P. gets to sand everything above about five feet. It’s either that or a lot of Xanax, which would probably cause me to pass out and fall right off the ladder, and that wouldn’t be helping anyone.
We have this hard core gas mask kind of thing that I’m supposed to wear to protect me from the evil paint dust. It makes me look like a preying mantis and sound exactly like darth vader. And I don’t know what’s sexier than that combination. I keep forgetting to put it on though, and P. gets really mad and tells me about how I could die from the dust. Which would suck, truly, so I’m trying to remember to wear it.
You would think that all this sanding would buff my arms right up, but so far, no such luck. But as we have 89% of the walls to go, it still could happen. I’ll let you know in about 15 years.