So we're back from our little two night trip to the public use cabin. Adventures were had. Is the painting done? No, it is not.

I had to downgrade my goals from "getting all the painting done so it can cure while we're gone" to "let's get the lighter green color all done" to "let's just finish the goddamn cabinet interiors". Then I was trying to rush and get good coverage in the third/final coat, so I wouldn't need to do a fourth, and guess what? After doing so well with the previous two coats, I laid down too much paint in spots and there were drips. I knew I was going to have to go back, sand those down and paint over, and that put me in a cranky mood. I've def reached the angry hate stage of the project. So I didn't even finish the cabinet interiors, really. It just goes on and on and on ... always painting, never finishing.

"Nobody's going to even look in these cabinets!" I groused to spouse. "I don't know why I care!"

"You know what your problem is?" he said, poking his head through the plastic covering the kitchen entry. "Hercule Poirot. He saw things as they should be, and then all the flaws in reality stood out as glaringly obvious. Same thing with you."

I don't know why I care about little unsightly drips in the top corners of rarely opened cabinets, but I do. I do very much care. Every time I get in that cabinet, or every time I look at the kitchen, I will know the drips are there and be aggravated. So I must fix it. That's just how it is. It's not a 100% perfect paint job, by any means, especially the weird narrow lower cabinets that are so difficult to work in that I feel like a raccoon scrabbling for crayfish in a muddy pond. Pretty sure the coverage is uneven there, if you looked at it with a flashlight. But I won't have any shitty drips. I guess it's a pride thing? Or just a defense against haughty amateur cabinet inspectors? For my mental peace of mind, no drips.

I examined the cabinet interiors yesterday and sanded down the drip spots. Otherwise, the coverage is acceptable. Today I will roller over the sanded spots, and that ought to be it for the cabinet interiors. Then I mask the cabinet interiors in preparation for the dark green coats on the outer cabinet faces. There are a few spots to touch up from removing the tape I used to mask off the interiors. I used the really good yellow frog tape, so for the most part it came off perfect. Maybe some soaked in grease on the cabinets that prevented the primer from bonding completely.

I have primed all the large faces of the shelves, but I need to do the shelf edges. I started the first coat of green on the first batch of shelves. There are 17 shelves + 5 pieces for the one drawer I had to disassemble + 2 shelves from the kitchen cart + 2 shelves from the laundry room I am throwing in for funsies. The large faces are easy to paint, but the edges suck. I got a small 2" roller, should be better than trying to paintbrush them.

I am so tired of having no kitchen. I unwrapped the microwave and oven after the last cabinet interior coat, just so we can use them for a little bit before I have to tape them back up for the dark green. We've been living off costco premade foods, and I remembered we have the grill so we made hamburgers (from frozen patties) a couple nights. We're eating okay, just tired of the whole inconvenient circus.

We patched the pipe flashing on the roof with some kind of tar based roof repair. Spouse dubbed it "roof frosting" - I can't remember the name. It must be working because we had a rainstorm afterward and no water in the crawlspace. Fixed it just in time.

I was so absorbed with painting that spouse had to take over the preparation for the cabin trip. It snuck up on me. This is a different cabin than the one I went to in March - this one has a mile hike, which is not far, but far enough that you don't want to make trips back and forth if you can help it. I'd thought about getting one of those folding wagons at costco, but $90 seemed like a lot for something we may not use much. We settled on using these rolly cart things we already had. Our camping gear is more suited for car camping and we're not looking to drop $1k on nice backpacking stuff for a casual trip. It's only a mile hike, right? And there's a cabin at the end, so we don't need the tent.

Spouse gets our camping stuff together and packs it. I wrap up painting and throw my stuff in a backpack and we hop in the car for the 3 hour drive. I'm expecting the mile to the cabin to be kinda like the walk to the other cabin I stayed at in the same general area. It was a fairly wide atv capable trail (from what I could tell, under the snow). We get to the trailhead and we gather our gear and our rolly carts. We figure out pretty quick this is not a rolly cart friendly trail, ha ha. First there are all kinds of exposed roots. The farther we get, the gnarlier the roots get, and then there are lots of rocks, and then the trail starts to get very narrow and sunken in spots, bordered on each side by thick bushy plants and grasses. Nothing wheeled is going to have a good time. I'm glad I didn't buy the costco wagon as it would have been worse than the rolly carts. We end up having to pick up the carts and carry them, but we're already burdened, so it becomes a game of walk ahead with load #1, leave it, walk back and pick up rolly cart, carry it to load #1, repeat. We can't just leave stuff lest the wildlife take an interest. The trail keeps going on and on. We see the cabin across the lake, hooray! It gets obscured as we round a point, but we think we're close. We keep going back and forth, ferrying our shit, swearing this is way more than a mile. We spot the cabin again and realize we still have a long way to go. Ugh. It takes us about an hour and a half to get to the cabin. We swear it is at least 2 miles and they figured the distance wrong. There's a rowboat tied up at the lakeside and spouse loves it at first sight. We left one of our bundles of firewood in the car, to fetch the next day. Spouse finds the life preservers and is excited to take the rowboat. I am not - I do not trust boats. Now that we've gotten to the cabin, all is well. I realize spouse packed a bunch of extra stuff we didn't need, plus we could have taken the one day of food and left the rest at the car to retrieve with the firewood, but whatever, we made the hike and we're sweaty but not wrung out.

The next day we have a hearty breakfast and then I nap, because I didn't sleep well. You never realize how much you depend on a good pillow until you don't have it. Spouse wakes me up and I shit you not, he's got a Brian Blessed grin pasted on his face and wild eyes - he's got his floppy hat with the sides folded up so it looks like a tricorn, his cheap knockoff oakleys, a streak of soot down his cheek from making the campfire and he's wearing one of the life vests - looking for all the world like some kind of mad max pirate. He declares it is time for rowboat and he won't be reasoned with. I get bullied onto this dingy. Fortunately we do not capsize. We ferry one of the useless rolly carts back and some of the superfluous supplies, and we pick up the firewood bundle. He does most of the rowing so I can't complain much, except to snarkily call him Cap'n the rest of the day.

We get back and I go hunting for driftwood. I wanted to hunt for driftwood first, take it back using the boat, but Cap'n had no patience for that. A couple years earlier, wildfire burned much of the trees around the lake. There's a lot of dead burnt trees and dead roots and thus an abundance of decent driftwood along the northern shore. I saw the wood on the hike to the cabin. I have this idea for a mural and driftwood may work. Why not get some for free?

So I find two nice 4-5' large pieces of driftwood and some smaller twigs. I know it's going to be a pain to pack out the larger pieces, but one is super gnarled and cool looking, great to mount over the mantle, and the other is straightish and good for hanging stuff. I want them both. Spouse agrees they are cool.

We have a good time. Spouse is mostly absorbed with tending the fire. He's in the middle of reading "Atlas Shrugged" because he feels like it's something he should read for himself, but it's not a fun read and he mostly enjoys finding the worst bits to quote at me so we both suffer. I'm reading "The Inner Life" by Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan - about as polar opposite as you can get. We read passages to each other. The wind dies down on the lake and it is so still and quiet. There's not much wildlife, probably because the area is still recovering from the fire. There's a few songbirds, one outraged squirrel, a few loons, and we see a pair of muskrats in the evening. And skeeters, naturally. The logbook says a bear was spotted recently but we don't see him, or any large animals. A bit of rain passes through and we see a beautiful vivid rainbow over the lake, and a gracious apricot colored sunset. We are the only people for miles - we know because if there's anyone on the trail or the lake, we can clearly hear their chatter. No cell reception. We sleep well, having found better substitute pillows. I hear the haunting calls of loons in the night. We brought foam pads to sleep on - they are thick and awkward, def not for backpacking, but they're about as comfortable as it gets. Better than an air mattress.

We could have done with bringing a little more water, but overall our consumables were fine. Spouse purified some lake water with tablets to supplement. Two bundles of firewood was enough for cooking - temps were between 50-60 so we didn't really need fire for heat. We had a lot less stuff to haul on the way back (but then we added driftwood ...). Spouse has an idea to convert the other rolly cart into an improvised backpack frame with bungie cords for shoulder straps. This mostly works well except one of the bungie cords disintegrates halfway. I lash one piece of driftwood to my backpack and use the other as a walking stick. I collect some lupine seeds on the way back - we are in late summer/early fall and the seed pods are everywhere for scavenging. Spouse uses his garmin watch to settle the question of how far it is back to the car. They MUST have lied about it being a mile.

It is 1.1 miles! They were right. Aside from a little trouble with spouse's improvised backpack, the return trip goes smooth and quick. We can't believe it seemed so long. Ferrying our stuff really messed with our distance perception. Well, we won't make the mistake with the rolly carts again. We talk about investing in real framed backpacks and bougie REI camping gear. We talk about getting one of the cabins closer to Anchorage and inviting friends. I think next time, I should bring my recorder and spouse should bring his concertina and we should learn how to play a song together. There's no one around to object to our music making! It's a good time.

We stop in Soldatna and eat at a food stand called the Schnitzel Bomber. Amazing, hot, sticky sandwich with garlic mashed potatoes on the side. Pork schnitzel with thick bacon, goat cheese and cherry compote on a pretzel bun. So good. I want to try to copycat it to serve at gaming.

It starts to rain on the way back. By the time we get back to Anchorage, it is nearly a downpour and we are very glad we patched the roof before we left.

I'd write more but it's noon and I gotta get back to the cabinets. I'm supposed to take the car for maintenance at 2:30 and then we meet friends this evening. Tomorrow is gaming in the evening. See this is how it takes so long - there's all these interruptions. Sat & Sun should be full days of painting.

Oh we went and saw the Barbie movie. I was discouraged from Barbies as a kid (also poor) so I don't have much nostalgia for the doll. Probably wouldn't have seen it at all except we heard the movie was good. My sister and I had two or three Barbies and "The Heart Family". Basically Barbie except she's already married (presumably) and comes boxed with a husband and a baby you can tuck up in her modest pink dropwaist dress. Jesus approved! Yeah ... They make some jokes about a pregnant doll in the movie and they're right, it's creepy. The older I get, the more I wonder what the hell my mom was thinking. It just seems to get weirder and weirder. Seriously mom?

Anyway, they had way too much fun making that movie. Spouse and I laughed a lot. We really enjoyed it. The fact that conservatives are so threatened by it somehow makes it funnier. I love Weird Barbie. Yeah, the plot is absurd but the actors and script are so charming and entertaining it can be forgiven. Sure, the doll is a materialistic fantasy for girls. But is a version like The Heart Family any more moral, or just way worse in different ways? Is the movie getting so much heat just because it's a "female" movie that has the nerve to say something true about men too? I feel like the outrage proves the point of the movie. It's worth the cost of a ticket for sure, and then make of it what you will.