I finally finished the painting job that I started late in the summer. I didn't mean to put it off so long, it just sort of happened that way. Even so, it all worked out just fine. The weather over the weekend was perfect for painting, with temperatures in the 70s and warm sunshine. I even managed to work up a sweat, something one wouldn't expect to be doing in early November.

As for painting, it isn't as easy as I always seem to think it is. I have heard it said that time heals all wounds and eases the pain of the past. Perhaps that is the way it is with painting. Once I get through it, my mind blocks out the fact that I really don't enjoy it at all.

This time, I also came to one of my standard realizations on the painting front. It came too late again — painting requires a systematic approach and should be done logically. In other words, start at the top and paint your way down. Other tidbits of knowledge that I have regained are the facts that paint must follow the rules of gravity unless it is on a roller. In addition, rollers cannot be made to not send out tiny flecks of spatter as they travel up and down the wall. In addition, I remembered that it is not possible to paint something more than one color without getting the one on the other at least in a few spots.

These are cardinal rules of painting, ones which anyone should keep close to heart when starting on a painting job. I suppose the really smart people who paint also use those drop cloth things and tape up the windows. I just repaint the porch and scrape the paint off the glass. As should be readily apparent, I still find myself not following my own best advice.

For instance, the porches are stained brown and the walls are painted a variable of the shade white. Wouldn't it have made sense to paint the walls first? Instead, I painted the porches and then ended up with tiny white spots where the paint disembarked the roller on one of its wild rides up the wall.

I also painted certain parts too sparingly, which left me with the need to go back and do it over.

I am not a very good painter. A good painter has a steady hand and a large stock of patience. A good painter makes preparations and paints carefully. I lack patience and my idea of forethought (when it comes to painting) is having the paint on hand when I am ready to start working. I have seen good painters at work and I know they do an immaculate job the first time. What a good painter can paint, I find myself having to paint and then repaint.

Since I also lack the financing to be able to pay a really good painter several hundred (or even thousand) dollars to do a job I can do myself with little more than time and aggravation, I think I can live with it.

Painting trim is one of my least favorite parts of painting. Standing on a shaky old ladder is not my idea of a good time. Standing on a shaky old ladder while trying to lean over and paint an eave and hold a bucket full of brown paint is much, much less than a good time. Not only do I generally worry about my own safety, I also have the added concern of having not painted the house in the proper order.

The shaky old ladder I am using is a borrowed one, left with me by a friend who was benevolent enough to let me use it and wise enough to stay away from my house until I was done with it. I was fortunate enough to have a friend come over on Saturday and hold the ladder for the highest part of the work. It was a mental comfort, if nothing else.

While I have never fallen from a ladder and been injured, my father once broke two vertebrae in his neck in a fall off a step ladder onto a concrete porch. If that isn't enough to give you a healthy respect of ladders, what is? Perhaps watching said father go through traction in a spinning bed. That will surely get your attention. If that doesn't do it, just think about a lifetime of pain and suffering from recurring back problems — as if I didn't already have a few problems to deal with in that department. I doubt anyone ever climbs a ladder thinking, "All I need is a debilitating injury to make my life complete." Even so, a little extra caution never hurt anyone, unless it prevents them from doing the task at hand. I have one friend who has an incredible fear of heights. When it comes time to paint, he hires someone. He builds culvert boxes under the ground for a living. I suppose he couldn't go much lower without being a miner. No one ever got hurt falling out of a ditch.

Anyway, as I stood upon the ladder, about two feet from the power pole beside the house and 20 feet or so off the ground, I tried to remain every bit as worried as I should have been. Trying to get every spot covered and simultaneously keep yourself from getting killed is quite a task indeed. It is one I don't care to do over.

I feel sure that falling is the most helpless feeling one can have, second only to watching brown paint fall toward a white wall from the eave of a roof. I can tell you that from experience. All you can do is shake your head as you watch the paint head for the wall and then hit and run down slowly.

You see, I seem to have the uncanny ability to get paint on everything around me, including myself, almost to the same degree that I apply it to the object being painted. Luckily, with my experiences of the past, I am wise enough to don some of my previously-painted pants and an old shirt prior to picking up a paint brush.

At any rate, as soon as I break out the paint brush and cover up the little white spots on the porch, I am going to call the job finished.

That's more than I can say for most of the tasks I still have on my list. Maybe next time I paint, I'll actually start at the top, but I doubt it. I feel sure I will forget all my trials and lessons learned that I suffered through during this project, just in time for the next one.

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