Saturday 23 August 2008

Pic of the day: The small house I rent.

Surprise house paint

A couple days ago the landlord's mother called me on my way to work. She told me that there were some people coming to wash the outside of the house to prepare for it being painted later. But I had already observed them before I left. It seemed a harmless enough activity, washing the outside walls.

Today they were back, this time to paint the house. This was not a complete surprise, because of the earlier phone call and because of all the white paint they had stored right beside the house. Even so, I did not know the day nor the hour. For unrelated reasons, I had been sleeping late and only woke up after 11. (I assure you, this is unusual even on weekends these days: All through this summer I have become sleepy before midnight and have woken up correspondingly early. This is completely different from the past couple years, and I have no explanation for it. But this night had been an exception.) Anyway, when I woke up the painters were there already.

For the next hour and a half, they kept painting around the door and the bathroom window (which you can see directly to the left of the door in the picture above). Or at least that's what it sounded like from their voices, which were in some unidentified Slavic language. For an hour and a half, or perhaps an hour and three quarter, they did not move from right outside my bathroom window. I know this because my bowels were particularly upset this morning, filled with a mixture of gas and solids urgently seeking escape through a process of explosive decompression. Yet such is the power of my iron potty training more than 45 years ago, that I found it impossible to give in to my flesh while a bunch of strangers were gathered RIGHT OUTSIDE the only bathroom. It was a very long 1 3/4 hours.

Never underestimate the power of potty training gone wrong.

The house, however, was painted quite professionally. Whatever country these people were from, they clearly knew how to paint. Actually, I believe all Slavic countries use paint on their houses, as opposed to clay or stucco or whatever it's called down in the south. I have no idea whether they pay tax, though. Perhaps they do that in their home country, where the taxes are much lower. Or perhaps not at all, which is the way many Norwegian painters do it. But that's none of my concern. I didn't ask them to come and I certainly didn't pay them. Well, not directly. I do pay my rent every month, which should be plenty enough to keep this little house in tip top shape. Not that I'm complaining, the rent is just fine for the size of the house and the size of the house is just fine for a single man like me. Except for having bathroom only on one side of the house, that is...