I’m posting this from my IPhone so it is very imperfect! I can’t get the photos to be placed where I want them, and I’ve lost several huge chunks of text — just out there somewhere in Saved WordPress Land… Did I mention typing all this on an IPhone keypad? It’s very frustrating, but I’m here at the cottage for working, not writing.

Happy Fourth! May you think about your freedoms today …

We had several firsts with our kitty this week: He was here to greet us when we got out of the truck on Friday afternoon. Sleeping in the side yard under some bushes, he was trying to keep cool in the ninety degree plus temperatures. We invited him inside and gave him lunch–we didn’t even have to ring the dinner bell. We had errands in town and he wasn’t interested in going back out in the heat, so we left him sleeping on the cool linoleum floor. He made himself right at home–he was sleeping on the bed when we returned.

So the name Phineas T doesn’t just roll right off our tongues. Half the time I can’t remember it. If Michael calls him anything other than Kitty, it’s likely to be George or Elmo. Cats don’t really come to their names anyway, do they? Here Elmo, Elmo….

After I finally chose the color for the kitchen cabinets — Steamed Milk in a semi-gloss sheen — the painting contractor husband started with second thoughts about oil base. I’m thinking he was worried about my lack of skill in the painting dept.; he is a perfectionist. I myself have those tendencies. Sometimes it’s not a good mix; sometimes a person is needed who will just jump right in and get it done. Sometimes I can be that person, but not in the aforementioned painting dept.–there I will always defer. So we dithered. We bought a gallon of latex in Steamed Milk for the insides of the cabinets in case it was too difficult to make the oil look good. “Oil is hard to use,” he said. “It runs, it drips, it is sticky, it smells bad, it is hard to clean up.” Not to mention that it is now considered to be a hazardous material! (More on that later…)
So I have now tried both types of paint. And the verdict is…

OIL!

It looks much better than the latex. It feels better on the wood. And how wonderful it is to have the perfectionist painting contractor look at a drawer just painted by the grunt laborer and say, “Wow! That looks like you sprayed it on!” High praise, indeed, and good for the soul.

With the exception of choosing the color (463 shades of white) the main difficulty lies in the actual purchasing of oil-based paint. The big box stores don’t even sell it. In PA it can only be sold to residential customers in quarts. If I were painting a pipeline, I could get it in larger quantities, but probably not in the lovely off white color of Steamed Milk. (Isn’t that perfect for a kitchen?) I digress…

A few weeks ago my niece posted this on her crafty blog handmaden.com “Little-known-fact: You can’t buy spray paint in Chicago’s city limits. This is not good news for crafters. So we started this crafternoon with a trip to the suburban Home Depot for some metallic spray paint.”

Rant ahead : Now I get why Chicago has done this; I understand that kids buy the stuff and either harm themselves with it or use it for graffitti. In PA the law is eighteen and older to buy alcohol, cigarettes, and spray paint! (A sales clerk at HD carded me the other day when I was buying a can–I was incredulous to say the least. She told me that at WM the clerk carded her for white-out!) Where will it end? What do you think is the ratio of responsible buyers vs. those who will be using these items illegally? I guess in Chicago it must be pretty low. Since it is the 4th of July, let me just suggest that freedom always comes with personal responsibility. Can I say this is government protection on steroids? I personally want the freedom to buy spray paint and white-out and a gallon of oil-based paint. Accept no substitutes! (There is no substitute for spray paint…) and if we’re considering substitutes and personal freedoms and government regulations, I also hate those squiggly light bulbs …