An American in Provence

When : Saturday night, 23:45
Where : Marseille, on the landing outside our apartment
Who : An American in Provence and one Nutty Frenchman
Situation : Locked out of their apartment, and really needing to use the bathroom
Why : Key stuck in very old lock
Agravating circumstances : leaving on the train in six hours for Strasbourg

Yep, Alain and I were locked out of our own apartment Saturday night. We had been out to dinner with some of the other people from Alain's karate club, up in Pelissane, and left after dinner was over at around 10:30 to return to Marseille. Figured I would wait until we got home to use the toilet, wasn't that urgent right?
Well, an hour later it was getting urgent.
Park (in a totally illegal spot, the only kind available after about 19h in marseille) sprinted back to our apartment, where Alain put the key in one of the five locks (yes, we have five but only use three) and...
Nothing.
The key had twisted, making it impossible to pull it out or turn it.
What to do?
Panicing, we head over to the McDonald's on the corner (this McDonalds has served us well in our times of bathroom need, like when we didn't have a toilet for a weekend due to replacing it with a new one).
Bought a soda, used the facilities and debated what to do next. We could head to his parents' house for the night, waking them up in the middle of the night, but my train was leaving at 7:40 the next morning, with all my stuff inside the apartment (and not quite finished packing either I might add).
We decided to call information. Anti-cellphone people that we are, we had to find a payphone (not easy nowadays, there are fewer and fewer payphones around). There happened to be one right across from the McDonalds, so we called information and were put through to a 24 hour locksmith. We gave him our name and address and he said he would be there in about 30 minutes, and it would be at least 200€. I was just hoping that the door wouldn't have to be broken down- sure to wake all the neighbors (and our neighbor would probably call the police on us) plus, as nothing is standard size, we would have to have another specially made. We headed back to the apartment to wait. I waited down by the building entrance while he went back up to try again to get in.
About five minutes later, he comes running down, tells me that he managed to open the door, and is about to sprint out to the payphone when I call after him "Why don't we just use the phone in our apartment then?" He turns around and runs back up. We get in (after all these years of moaning about this apartment, it sures feels different after you are locked out of your own home) and he dials the number given by information. Hello, we just called about the lock... Aren't you a locksmith? Oh. Sorry for waking you.
Call information again, get the (correct) number for the locksmith, call him again, tell him that we managed to get in and don't need his services anymore.... He was rather annoyed, which I suppose is understandable, and hung up.
Went to sleep a little before 1, for five whole hours of sleep.
Got to the train station at 7 am for my train that leaves at 7:40. Alain was teasing me about being so early, but I told him "you never know with the SNCF". Indeed, a few minutes later, my train completely disappeared from the sign. One minute it was there, showing as "on time", next minute, nothing, like it never existed.
We quickly asked one of the agents what happened, and she said "Oh, it has been canceled due to a strike." what else is new?!
We quick ran over to a train leaving at 7:10 going by Lyon as well (which is the one that I usually take) and I managed to hop on board, without having the correct ticket and without validating (composté) my ticket.
Managed to sit behind two families with young children who had portable DVD players with "the Lion King" showing to keep their kids entertained, without headphones of course. Really, the last thing I want to hear at 7:30 am on a sunday morning after five hours of sleep is
Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba Sithi uhm ingonyama Nants ingonyama bagithi babaSithi uhhmm ingonyamaIngonyamaSiyo Nqoba IngonyamaIngonyama nengw' enamabala!!!!!

Ahhh!!!

Honestly. Some people have no respect for others. Please readers, if you have children, I understand that you want/desperately need to keep them entertained. But do you really want your fellow passengers contemplating throwing you/your kid/the portable DVD player out the window of the TGV?
Thank you.

After my last post about Alain's progress with our kitchen during his August vacation
see: Everything but the...

(before, when we moved in)

He installed the sink the next day. It looks great but I am now officially paranoid about actually cooking in the kitchen. I don't want to get water on the wood countertop (which is protected by several layers of resin, but still).

Plus, our kitchen was built for Swedish giants.
It is really really high.

Anyway, our dishwasher arrived the week after our return from Bretagne, and was installed just fine. Took us awhile to figure out how to use it, (turns out that those power ball things are not actually the "Sel" that is needed).

It turns out that the King of Dishes is reluctant to use the darn thing.
I thought he would be all over it, but no. I have to forcibly remind him "Put the dishes in the dishwasher."

Our cooking/eating habits are, for the moment, incompatible with the use of a dishwasher. It seems that when you do the dishes by hand, there are about two of everything (plates, cutlery, glasses) that are in constant rotation and never actually make it from the drying rack back to the cupboard. Now we actually have to use all of our plates/knives/forks/etc. before the dishwasher gets run. Ah well. I'm sure we will adjust.

So, I am now officially calling it..


The Apartment Renovation from H--- is Finished!


Three years and many fights later, we are ready to move on.


Now to the annoying part of getting rid of all the extra building stuff and organizing. Maybe we can actually start living now.


It is amazing how much actual space we have when three room's worth of stuff isn't shoved into the living room + sacks of concrete and bits and pieces of wood and boxes of broken tiles and power tools and all the rest.

We made several trips with carloads of stuff to Alain's parent's house, so they were less than pleased to come back from two months in Bretagne and find their garage overflowing with stuff.
SURPRISE!

Kitchen Sink.


Alain has spent the first two weeks of August working on his Honey Do list:
Number 1) Finish the kitchen!
Number 2) See number one!
Number 3) What, you still haven't finished the kitchen yet?
Number 4) What are you doing looking at number 4 on the list if number 1 isn't done yet?!
And so forth.

(removed old sink and moved washer ->)

This is something that he has been waiting to have a significant block of time before attacking.

We had long ago replaced the water heater, changed the gas pipes, removed the ugly glass and metal monstrosity above the stove, removed the incredibly ugly wallpaper, repainted, and installed the cabinets. *ALL* that remained was to add some more plugs (our apartment was built in a time when they could not figure out why anyone would need more than one plug in each bedroom, and a maximum of two in the kitchen), move the piping around, and install the new sink and a dishwasher.

Back when we bought the kitchen elements (from IKEA, where else?) in Nov. 2007, we also bought the sink, coutertop, and a door for the dishwasher. We were planning on having one of those integratable ones, where you put a door on the front that looks like the rest of your cabinets.


Anyway, all of that has been sitting in our apartment, shifted from one room to the other from time to time.

As Alain has all of August off, he decided to tackle it this month. He installed three new plugs on one side of the kitchen and three on the other.

Electricity + Water = Yay!

We removed the disgusting old sink (which is now sitting in the small bedroom) and have been without a kitchen sink for almost two weeks now. I thought not having a shower was difficult but in a way this is almost more difficult. And am getting tired of washing the dishes in a bucket. Anyway.


We paid (400€ ouch) a plumber to come and move the piping around because it wasn't in the right place for what we wanted to do. As our apartment was built before there were standard sizes (and certainly nothing is straight) we had to do quite a balancing act to be able to get a dishwasher+sink+washer+stove in the area we have.


After much measuring, we finally decided that we would not be able to put a dishwasher of 60 cm wide in the space next to the sink (so now we have an extra door that will go in his parent's magical attic). We decided that we would have to go with a dishwasher of 45 cm wide.

Last Saturday we went to some hardware stores, bought some boards to rest the countertop on, and some bricks for him to build a small wall between the washer and the stove to support the other side of the countertop. This past week he mounted the boards/walls and got annoyed with me when each time I came home from work I went straight to the kitchen to see how much he had progressed. Not that I didn't think he was working fast enough, it was just interesting to see how it changes from day to day.

He cut the board, going through about 3 saw blades and filling the apartment with smoke- luckily nobody called the fire department, though it is a bit unsettling to think that our apartment could really be on fire and none of the neighbors would notice/react.

Last night we went to Ikea, bought a faucet, and then went to the discount appliance place and decided on a dishwasher, 45 cm wide. They will deliver it in about two weeks. We could have brought it to our apartment ourselves, but decided not to trouble with it for now- besides, with everything in the middle at the moment, there would be no place to put it. Better to wait for Alain to install the countertop, sink, and cabinet doors and then just put the dishwasher in place once it arrives. He has one more week to finish.


This is turning out to be an unexpectedly expensive month for us: new dishwasher, paying for plumber, paying to get the car fixed, plus taxes. Yikes. At least the taxes were less than we predicted because we got some reductions for the new windows and water heater that we installed.

Alain took two weeks off from his work in order to work on the apartment (mainly living room and hallway). He has been a busy (cranky) little beaver these past few weeks, but I am quite pleased to say that we are finished with two more rooms!

Before his break started, we spent a day clearing everything out of the two rooms, which mainly meant shoving it into the bedrooms and taking the rest over to his parents.
Us: Hi! Us again with more c*** to store in your garage!
His parents: Super! Just what we wanted!


Anyway, the first week was pretty much spent re-doing the electricity in the living room, adding more plugs. He then tried to add some "lambris" that we bought (had to look up this word in English- paneling) along the wall upon which we added the sound-proofing foam that doesn't work. (what a waste). Anyway, it looked terrible and cheap, mainly because our walls are anything but straight. We decided to forget that idea and wallpaper the entire wall. There goes another 150€. What do we do with these three packets of paneling that we decided not to use but can't return? I know! Store them in your parent's garage!

We then painted the hallway ceiling white last Sunday, then he painted the walls a light blue/grey Monday, prepared the living room for painting Tuesday, and painted it white Wednesday.
His parents came over Saturday, ready for wallpapering. Neither of us had ever wallpapered before, so they really helped us. In fact, they did most of it.

It was a bit tricky to hang because the pattern had to be lined up from one strip to another.
It took about 8 hours, but we finally got the wall papered, and the living room is officially done!
It is a light blueish/white/grey and changes depending upon the light. Sometimes if the sunlight is directly shining on the wallpaper, you can hardly even see it. It has a bit of an old-fashioned feel that goes well with the crown moulding.

It is so nice and big now, mainly because we removed the tools, extra doors leaning against the wall, clothes dressers, etc.

We will have to start inviting people over before we have no friends left.

Oh, and we installed the new light we found at Castorama, quite by accident. We had looked for a light for our living room for months and months and were unable to find anything that really interested us and was less than 500€. We found this one for 200€ and immediately pleased both of us. At any rate, it is better than the Ugliest Light Fixture Ever Invented that was hanging there before. It isn't quite centered but will do for now. And about the next three years I'm guessing.

Alain's family decided to celebrate Easter on Easter Monday, instead of Sunday.

Saturday was an Epically Lazy Saturday.
Here is what I did- got up, went to the grocery store, and got mentally lost several times while perusing the aisles. What am I here for? Oh yeah. Yogurt. Wake up Megan.
Came back home, and we watched three episodes of Lost (season 3). Ate lunch. Then I napped on the couch for about four hours while Alain watched various Jean-Claude van Damme movies.
Woke up around 5, went and rented a movie. Came back, ordered pizza, and then ate said pizza while watching the movie ("The Happening"). Went to bed at around 10 pm, exhausted.

Sunday- more Lost, then spent the afternoon putting our medium-sized bedroom back together. We painted it white a few weeks ago. This is another room that defies the "painting is easy" mentality.

ONE DAY after painting, there were cracks in the paint. So incredibly frustrating. Alain sanded and repainted. There were more cracks. We gave up.
Also, it turns out that Ancient Egyptians were better builders than French Workers in the 1950's (no comment upon the present-day French builders, someone else with more a recently-constructed dwelling will have to fill us all in).
Nothing. Is. Straight.
Looks like they just guesstimated about all those darn silly angles.


In honor of Chitlins & Camembert, I am posting our own
Bare Lightbulb Hanging From A Rosace Picture.

Sunday afternoon, after removing all the tape, cleaning the paint off the window, and putting the furniture back, we replaced the World's Ugliest Plugs (brown and beige- ergh) with the new ones we bought. Managed to not get electrocuted, which is always a bonus.

Didn't put up the light we bought, mainly because we didn't have a lightbulb for it. Also need to go buy a curtain rod and curtains (my favorite part!).

One more room sorta finished. Not perfect but moving on.

Some of you may know this song from the musical "Camelot".
Well no, not this song exactly. The song "What do the simple folk do?"

Guenevere and Arthur are sitting around wondering what the "simple folk" do to escape their cares.
GUENEVERE:
What do the simple folk do
To help them escape when they're blue?
The shepard who is ailing, the milkmaid who is glum
The cobbler who is wailing from nailing his thumb
When they're beset and besieged
The folk not noblessly obliged
However do they manage to shed their weary lot?
Oh, what do simple folk do we do not?

This weekend, while working on the apartment, this song suddenly came to me, but with the lyrics:
What do the non-renovating folk do?

Seriously, what DO you non-renovating folk do with your weekends and holidays?
Do you sit around and wonder what renovating folk do?

I am just wondering what we will do when we are no longer renovating our apartment, with the oodles and oodles of time stretching out before us.
Read books! Go visit a museum! Visit people who have given up on us after three years!

Between the life-essentials (buy groceries, do laundry), not-getting-condemmed-for-health-violation-essentials (taking out the trash, doing bare-minimum cleaning), still-trying-to-keep-friends-essentials (going out to the occasional movie/dinner), renovating-essentials (God, back to Castorama AGAIN?!) and not-going-bonkers-essentials (pizza and movie night), there just hasn't been time for anything else, like actually mopping the floor (windex and a paper towel does wonders), getting hair cuts, seeing the Van Gogh exhibition in Marseille, and all the rest of it.

All I can say is Thank Goodness We Don't Have A Baby Yet. Well, I guess a baby would be okay, once we figured out where to put it (on the sack of cement or on the pile of bricks?) because babies pretty much seem to stay where they are put/tied. However, this place would be a death trap for a toddler. No! Put the saw down Gigi!

So non-renovating folk. Tell me what you do with your free time. Even if you don't have any, LIE. Lie through your teeth. It is the only thing getting me through.
Thank you.

PS Anyone who says something like "We start over re-renovating our apartment" will be shot. Just a friendly warning.
Thank you.

Last weekend, Alain and I (well, mostly Alain, but I held the other end of the ruler and stuff) finished putting up our humongo custom-made closet doors.
(see these two posts Placard and Great Wall of Alain)

As our ceilings are 2.9 meters high, we had to have our doors custom-made. The standard size is 2.5 meters, and the largest they do is 2.8 meters. So we decided to have three doors made, two with a wood-paneling motif and the third as a mirror, each 70 cm wide.

(our doors, mirror on the right, gap at the top)

When we were first looking around to buy these babies, we picked out a model and asked how much it would be. 1500€. Yikes.

It turns out that it (mainly) depends on what type of metallic border you want- aluminum very very expensive but lighter. Not worth it in my opinion.

We waited for the doors to be on sale, then ordered all three of them for 630€. They said it would take about 6 weeks to make.

They were done at the beginning of January, so one Sunday morning Alain's parents met us at Castorama, where we picked up the doors, loaded them into a rental van, and brought them to Marseille (in the rain, naturally). We could have had them delivered, but it would have been about 100€ more.

Alain spent a few weekends putting up the rails, and then we mounted the doors last weekend. As there is a 10 cm gap between the top of the rail and the ceiling, we bought a piece of wood that I painted blue and that will hide the gap.

Still haven't actually put our clothes inside, one thing at a time.

We have finally decided on what new light switches and plugs to buy to replace the World's Ugliest Light Switches. Honestly, who EVER thought that these cream and brown monstrosities would be nice? Well, I mean who living after the 1970's? (never mind the wall, we haven't yet gotten around to painting it. We are leaving the old plugs up until after the wall is finished so that we don't get paint all over the new ones.)

We decided on these light switches and corresponding plugs, in white and grey.

As I watched the cashier ringing them up, all I could think of was "One hour of work. Two hours of work. Three hours of work.." as the little buggers went by. Not hours of work to put them up, hours of work to pay for them.

I have worked out approximately how much I make per hour, after taxes. It helps when deciding whether or not to buy something. Is this shirt really worth 4 hours of work? Nah. Is this cute dress really worth 2 days of work? Totally! etc.

You would think something like replacing light switches and plugs to be fairly simple- unscrew the old one, unclip the old wires, re-attach them in the correct places to the new switch, screw back into wall, and put faceplate on to cover the screws.

Yeah, that would be how it works in a non-Alain and Megan household.

In an Alain and Megan household (which happens to have ancient wiring and everything non-standard sizes) a simple task such as changing a light switch can take an hour.

Why you ask?

Because the space in the wall is too small for light switches made after 1970.

For these two in our kitchen, we hooked everything up, then tried to fit them back into the wall space. Nope, they are too big. We had to take the power drill and drill out some of the brick behind, without breaking the tile. However, in order to be able to work the power drill, we needed electricity.

Can I get a hip hip hooray for power tools and live wires?
Hip hip? Hooray!
Hip hip? Hooray!
Hip hip? ZZZZZTTTT.
(blackout)


Actually, that didn't happen. We both survived and got the plugs installed.

Yet for a week afterwards, I had light switch amnesia.

Apparently, all of the light switches in our apartment had been orientated in different directions. Some you had to push the part on top to turn on the light, some you had to push the part on the bottom. I guess we had just gotten used to it and pushed the correct part in each room, but now we are installing them all in the same direction, push on the top to turn on the light. The light switch in the kitchen must have originally been installed the opposite way. For a good week, I kept trying to push the bottom part to turn on the light.
Maybe if I just push it harder.... Why won't this turn on? Oh yeah, have to push the top part. There we go. Finally got it figured out now. I guess it didn't help that my brain has been MIA since mid-November.

Question- why is "toilet" always used in the plural sense in France?

This past weekend, we began working on constructing the closet in our bedroom.

Stage 1: (0-6 months)
Goal: It has to be perfect.
Budget: Minimum possible. This should work out to about 500€ per room.
Objective: Get to spend lots of quality time with my sweetie.
Things to be done: Absolutely everything. Re-do the walls, tear up the floor and install hardwood floors, consider knocking out a wall or two.
Projected timeline: It should be done in 6 months.

Stage 2: (6 months to one year)
Goal: Well, maybe it won't be perfect but at least it will be how we want it (colors, wallpaper, bathroom tiles, etc)
Budget: Okay, perhaps this will be more expensive than we planned. But we will spend the money for the stuff that is important to us, and cut back in other areas.
Objective: Learning about how to renovate a home- paint, tile, etc.
Things to be done: All the major stuff- walls, kitichen, bathroom, etc. Decide that you can live with the ugly floor tile and will just cover it up with a rug.
Projected timeline: This should be done 1 year-1.5 years

Stage 3: (1 year to 2 years)
Goal: Well; maybe it won't be perfect but it at least it will be done.
Color of blue paint not exactly what we expected? Oh well. We can live with it.
Budget: Yikes, 1500€ for three closet doors? What are they on crack?
Objective: Just want the damn thing done.
Things to be done: Well, let's just do the basics- repaint, etc.
Projected timeline: This can't possibly take much longer.

Stage 4: (2+ years)
Goal: Hope we are still married by the time this renovation is finished.
Budget: Don't care, just pay. Too sick and tired of comparing paint samples, visiting 4 home improvement stores to find a doodad that is 5€ cheaper. Don't even feel like going back to the store to return the wrong item. At this point, what is another 15€?
Objective: Don't kill each other.
Things to be done: Can we go back in time to how it was before we started the renovations and just live with it?
Projected timeline: The renovations are finished or I chew off my arm, whichever comes first.

What is claimed is:

1) A method for painting a bathroom (a first surface) comprising the steps of:
- selecting at least one liquid material of a specified color (paint) in a container,
- purchasing said at least one paint as well as one or more paint application utensils from the group consisting of: paintbrush, roller, spraygun,
- applying the paint to at least one paint application utensil,
- utilizing the paint application utensil in order to transfer paint from container to the first surface, and
- repeating at least some of the above steps until the first surface is entirely covered with the paint.

2) A method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of getting a second surface, including but not limited to clothes, hair, skin (collectively known as "the painter"), or floor covered in said paint.

3) A method according to one of claims 1 or 2, including the step of yelling "Damn it, why doesn't this said paint stick to the first surface?!".

4) A method according to one of claims 1 to 3, wherein a further step includes being mad that said paint, which states on the container that only one layer of said paint is required on the first surface, actually requires at least two layers.

5) A method according to one of claims 2 to 4, comprising the steps of:
- trying to remove said paint from said painter (clothes, hair, and skin), and
- realizing that said paint is not water soluble as stated on said container.

6) A method according to one of claims 2 to 5, including the step of the painter going to work the next day covered in said paint.

7) A method according to one of claims 1 to 6, comprising the step of purchasing a further container of said paint due to the fact that said paint, though claiming to cover 20 m2 as stated on said container, is not sufficient to cover the first surface of 5 m2, which may or may not be related to claim 2 (getting said paint on a secondary surface), claim 3 (yellng "Damn it, why doesn't this said paint stick to the first surface?!"), or claim 4 (being mad that said paint actually requires at least two layers).

8) A method according to claims 1 to 7, comprising the step of repeating steps claimed in claims 1 to 7 until such a time as the first surface is actually covered by said paint.

Can you tell that I am training to become a patent lawyer?
Can you tell what I spent Sunday afternoon doing?

As Alain is still on vacation until September 1st, he is working full-spead ahead on our apartment. He is finishing the wall he built in our bedroom for the closet, and now needs to finish re-doing the rest of the walls in the bedroom- fill up the holes with concrete, sand, and then put the MagicLiss on, and sand again. Then the walls will be smooth and ready to be painted. In order for him to access the walls and not get everything covered in dust, we had to move everything out of our bedroom. Now the old armoires are in the living room, all the tools are back in the smallest bedroom, and we had to remove the mattress on our bed. We didn't have any other free space, so we put it on the second bed that we bought, which is in the medium bedroom. It is a pull-out bed, and we have been sleeping on it for a few months now. So now we are sleeping on two mattresses, and are starting to get quite high off the ground. I guess we could also throw the
couch mattresses on there (the couch is technically a bed, and has another pull-out bed underneath). Also could borrow the inflatable bed from the in-laws, and throw some sleeping bags on top.
We have ordered the crown moulding, so hopefully it will arrive in another week or so. Then we can glue it around the ceilings, and start painting! Woohoo! Then we can move back into our bedroom, and clear out the other rooms, paint, finish the living room, and then GET RID OF the sacks of cement, pieces of brick, broken tiles, bits and pieces, etc. The kitchen won't be finished, we still need to install the new sink and the dishwasher, but that can wait. It has been almost two years now, and I think we have both had it. We just want to LIVE on the weekends a little. Go to movies and museums, actually clean the apartment instead of just figuring "well, I could dust, but really what's the point?"
And go back to sleeping on one mattress only.

We have decided to build a closet in our bedroom, in order to take advantage of our 3 meter high ceilings. Except that we don't have any place to actually put the closet, so we decided to build two walls, one next to the radiator and one right when you enter in the room. It sure isn't easy working with these old buildings, where nothing is standard size. For example, standard kitchen cupboards and appliances are 60 cm wide. We have one wall where the sink goes that is 125, and another that is 110. It is quite a game of mix and match. And our doors are 208 cm high, and now the standard sizes are 204 or 211. Ah well. Back to the story.

At the beginning of June we decided to finally bite the bullet and buy an air-conditioner. We decided that this was the time to do it, before it got really hot and before we did any further work on the apartment- we knew that they would have to drill through walls in order to connect the pipes and the electricity, so it seemed better to do it before we painted.

These past few months I have been spending many weekends (not every weekend, but every other weekend or so) washing our walls. I removed the wallpaper back in August (oh what a fun week off from work that was!). Since then, they have been just sitting there, covered in glue bits and grime. Well, I guess they have to just sit there, they aren't going to get up and walk away or anything...
So before we can paint them, I have to get all the grime off, then Alain is putting a hole-filler-inner coat of goo on, then sanding and sanding and sanding. Next we will have to find some crown molding in polystyrene, cut and glue the crown molding, (which will we have to buy from a specialty store because of the size we need) and paint. But I don't want to think about that yet.

Basic process for wall cleaning is: push all furniture back from the walls.
(Oh how this whole entire process would have been easier if we had done it before moving in!)
Boil water.
Pour several scoops of a pine resin chemical into a bucket, add boiling water and really hot water.
Take old sponges.
Put hands in boiling hot chemical water.
Scrub scrub scrub.
Do about 5 meters squared per day.
Clean up sticky water on floor.
Wonder: where the heck is this rash on my hands coming from?
This is really puzzling.

I am embarassed to say how long it took me to connect the two events.
I have a rash on my wedding ring finger that just will not go away. I have tried everything- putting creams on. Not putting creams on. Soaking hand in bleach (that was FUN).
Every time I think it is almost gone it returns with a vengence.
Be glad I haven't posted pictures.
People have asked me if everything is alright in our marriage.
Yes of course, why do you ask?
Oh no reason.

One week later- oh, duh Megan. They noticed that you haven't been wearing your wedding ring for MONTHS.
I kid Alain that he is married but I am not.

I may never be able to wear my wedding ring again, but damn those are some clean walls. Too bad nobody will appreciate my sacrifice once they have been painted over.
(Oh, and for anybody wondering- no, gloves would not have helped. The water gets through anyway and you can't scrub as well with gloves on).
Sigh. Back to wall scrubbin'. I have about 10 meters squared left to go.