Oh my God.  Oh My God.  Oh. My. God.  The deck took forever yesterday.  I stained from 9 am to 5:30 pm with one 20 minute break for lunch at 12:30.  I am sore from the top of my shoulders to my calves.  And I've only done the first coat on the inside of the deck railings and the floor of the deck.  Oh my god!

Frank at Eastway Paints (who is the guru of paint in Charlotte.  really) advised us to use stain on the entire thing doing two coats on the railings and one coat on the floor.  I spent the first hour cleaning out between the slats on the deck floor with a putty knife.  A great deal of collie fur and leaves were removed.  I also spotted some previously unknown wildlife including about 30 dead baby snails on our deck door (at least that's what we think they are/were) and two fuzzy tiny bugs who looked like small, poorly designed buttons.  I have never seen anything like that before but there were two of them!  They looked like they were crusted over with green paint, but they were kind of fluffy too. 

The good news is that the deck looks really, really good!  There are a few spots on the deck floor that need a bit of smoothing over (i was too light in the amount of stain I used).  Nonetheless, it was a good call, even though there was doubt in the household if it would turn out to look like total crap (Option A was actually painting the railings white with dark deck floor---I think this looks better.  It's less formal.  And Option A was MY idea.  I own up to its potential crappiness)

Check me out!  I made the Charlotte Observer!!  Well, ok.  A question I asked of the garden guru was answered in today's living section!  Teehee!  She said I have the makings of a "great gardnerer!"  Yay!!  I also sent her a link to the blog, but that comment may indicate that she didn't read it.  Here's the naked link:  http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/living/home/6169760.htm

Off to work today.  Ok, one more whine:  I went running this morning and now my legs are just useless. 

Better news:  Dave and I are looking forward to sampling some Mojitos tonight!  Thanks to Carter's suggestion, we are buying some light rum and limes and looking forward to some outside mint magic!

8:12:57 AM