Arrival...Refrigerator?

Venturing ~ Horse Abstract Oil Painting by Laurie Justus Pace

18 x 24 on Linen Panel

Contemporary Art for your Home!

Contact me for Pricing or commission work.

Laurie Pace

Hummm, my hands are not covered with oil paint, but are chapped and dry from paper and boxes. We made our first trip to the new house. I am still in a stupor. She removed doors, light bulbs, switches etc. Does any seller clean the house and leave what they are suppose to leave? At the old house the man took hooks off doors that left HUGE wholes in the doors. He ripped speakers out of the walls from his surround sound....this woman took doors. Not inside doors, OUTSIDE doors, doggy doors. Then the floor man, Kyle ( what a gift he is!) discovers as he pulls up the nasty carpet in the living room, the center circle of concrete where the original round fireplace was located. No way he could nail the floor down to it, so he spent an hour last night jackhammering it out to be lower. The floor will be started today.

I spent two hours on my old studio floor last night scrubbing paint off. Terry gets to paint the walls. Not sure when. I found him out in the garage last night custom cutting tiny boxes for his treasures. My treasures were all thrown into boxes because there was not time to pack correctly with our flaky situation on were they buying the house or not.

Saga continues. This morning I asked him to pull my daughter's SUV up to the garage and put the seats down so I could load pictures...expensive paintings, framed etc, layered into the back of her car. (I do not have the luxury of delicately packing mine, but I did delicately pack his grandmother's china.) I carefully cart all the pieces to the work table in the garage and slid a piece of packing paper between them so the frames do not rub on each other. I have semi wet linen canvas in a box that are rubbing and I am praying over those. The last painting in is the huge 36 x 36 for the Collector in Dallas. Part is still wet. Deep sided canvas and I have to deliver it and hang it this weekend. Her party is the 13th. As I watch him shut the back gate door I see the painting precariously perched. I run down the driveway pulling the gate back open to see that the painting is HOOKED on the head rest. Hummm, how long does it take to figure out with wet paint on canvas it will bulge and cause the canvas to stretch and be loose and misshapen? I jerked it out and sent him on his way with a glare, holding my lips silent from the feelings I had in my heart and head. Is this a man thing???? Are most of them like this or just mine?

THEN, today is the last day for trash pickup and Morgan had URGED Terry to throw out anything he wasn't going to use at the new house. There is very little on the parkway for pick up. With the house my major responsibility, I hit the refrig as soon as he left to fill bags to go out of old food, old olives and pickles, and old salad dressings. (Do you have old stuff in yours too?) As I came down to the freezer I remembered. Oh did I remember.

I remembered SIX months ago he loaded bottles of liquor in the freezer. Why would one do this? We rarely drink, and I have no clue what it was. One of the bottles exploded and in the bottom of my freezer unit (this refrigerator is not even a year old) is what looks to be liquid. This liquid and broken glass has been there the entire six months. He claimed he could not get to it to clean it up. Remember he is an airline mechanic. I survey the situation and pulled out the bottom tray rack, removed the baskets and easy obtained access to the bottom of the freezer. I used a plastic knife to literally scrape up something that resembled thick butterscotch. I debated then...hoping I had all the glass up...I ran very very hot water and took an old cloth and filled it with the hot water. I jumped the kitchen throwing the hot dripping rag into the floor of the freezer. Ya know, it wiped right up. It is all clean. Why could this not be done six months ago when it happened?

As I worked I cannot claim the purest thoughts in my mind, but I knew the Lord was at work because of the ease of the clean up. UP until that point I had been grumbling in my head about men. Women seem to clean up after men all the time. Is that not why God created us? All seems to hinge around that OBEY word in the marriage vows. I had asked for the word OBEY to be left out of mine and dad gum if the minister didn't sneak it in there. It was said through gritted teeth and under my breath, and I am still cleaning up after him. I find myself cleaning up messes from all men in my life. But ya know, wiping up the goop so easily with hot water made me realize how easy God can make it for us if we don't grumble.

Fortunately for me, God continues to clean up my messes as I stumble along.

Peace,
Laurie

2 Corinthians 6:2
For he says, "In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you." I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation.