Singing for my supper

This post has nothing to do with singing, parenting (2- or 4-foot), photography, or any other stated brief. It's about paint. You know, that stuff that people put on their walls because it's "cheap" and (as the magazines cheerfully say) "such an easy facelift!". I have friends who paint regularly. And by "regularly", I mean pretty much as often as the Pottery Barn catalog comes out, or a new colour-scheme suddenly takes their fancy. In theory, I think this is a great idea. But the reality of it is that we are not "paint to change your mood" people. In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if we're even competent homeowners. Apparently, I completely and totally SUCK at choosing paint. When we did our renovation four years ago I went through about 15 sample pots before I found one I really liked (love, in fact). This time round, our weird variable light was complicated by a need to sometimes use the living room room for photoshoots, mean...

Today: home maintenance as my husband (bless him!) deals with gutters and reapplies the roof-elastomeric glop which (in theory at least) keeps our roof water repellent, kids alternating between playing outside and watching "Glee" upstairs, and I'm working on promotional materials, dates and repertoire for the Poe recital; after the Roof Glopping, we'll squeeze in a quick rehearsal. I think this is what counts for a "normal suburban Sunday" in this household.... (?!?!?!?!) The Poe recital seems to be gathering momentum. We enjoyed our radio interview (recorded last Monday, an edited version to be aired the week before Halloween and the full version to be available here soon) and are gratified that folks seem interested in the concept -we've been excited about it since we started planning it, but it's nice to know we're not alone in finding it an intriguing idea! As we head into the home stretch before the first performances, we find we're fal...