Summer is a rough time for people who are used to being psychotically busy. Contrary to popular belief, art students are generally such people. Thus, when school gets out, we all just sit around being bored and experiencing the paranoia that comes with not doing homework. Surely, there's a deadline somewhere that I'm missing! Relax, Beavis, it's summer. There are no deadlines.

In an effort to entertain myself during the boring, out-of-school summer months, I decided to redecorate my bedroom. You know, finally get some "big girl" furniture instead of that wire mesh stuff that they sell at Target during "decorate your new dorm room" time. At the ripe old age of 25, I was tired of living most of my life in an apartment that looked like a dorm in the ghetto. The start: get rid of the current bed (given to me as a help-us-get-this-crap-out-of-our-house gift from my parents' guest room) and get one of those snazzy metal canopy beds. Redecorating is also a good excuse to participate in the modern woman's hunt-and-gather: shopping. I found a good balance of quality and price at Mattress Warehouse. The bed that I picked out, being a twin, didn't come in black (apparently, a twin bed is only for a child's room and "who would want to put black in a child's room," as the salesman put it). Not wanting to go to the extra expense and loss of space that would come from choosing the full size, I decided that white would be fine. After all, I was just going to drape a bunch of black crap and fake wisteria all over it anyway, right? Right.

After two months (they had to special order a twin size), the big day arrives and the directionally challenged delivery guys show up. Unfortunately, they open the box for the frame to find that they've brought the wrong size. They leave the canopy, headboard, and footboard and say that they'll be back the next day, with the right frame, to actually put the bed together. That night, curiosity has its way with me and I open the boxes. The more I look at the parts that will be my bed, the more my inner goth squirms. I had never had the impulse to live in a small hotel room in Florida. A white bed was not okay.

I wake on Friday morning at 4:30. I think, "if I get up and paint the bed black right now, the paint will be dry by the time the guys get here this afternoon and I'll still make it to work on time." Without further adieu, I get up resolving to do some serious spray painting. I'd already purchased three cans of flat black Krylon as a "just in case," so I got out of bed, rolled up my pajama pants, and went into the workroom and started putting down plastic sheeting. After putting down 4 huge sheets from my standby roll of black plastic, I open the window and shove in the case for my palm sander to hold the window open, taking a moment to thank myself for finally getting the window UN painted-shut so that my apartment may take less than a week to air out this time. I don my white "SARS mask" ventilator and pry the lid off of the first can of spray paint to unleash the fury on the canopy's finials. Then the poles. Then the headboard. Then the footboard.

As the process progresses, my bare feet stick more and more to the plastic sheeting. By the time I'm done, the stickiness rivals that of Brer Rabbit in Tar Baby mode. The air in the workroom is thick with misty paint vapors, and much of the floor is black. Had the landlord walked in, I would have had to call 911 either to protect myself or to administer CPR. With the room filled with gray air, the bed paint still wet, and my feet stuck to the floor, I can't do much cleaning. I elect to take a shower.

I leap from the workroom to the bathroom, hoping to spare myself the added trouble of having to clean the hallway carpet. Needless to say, I "stuck" the landing. Ouch! Bad pun! Shoving the lavender bath mat aside, I step into the shower. The light coating of paint on my arms and legs comes off pretty easily but my feet, despite scrubbing with and ruining my bath brush, stay pure black. What to do? I take one step outside of the shower leaving a gray puddle, and grab the can of paint thinner. Oh, like you don't keep paint thinner in your bathroom? I pour paint thinner onto the bottoms of my feet. It's a funny thing about gravity: I can't hover. Thus, the paint on the bottoms of my feet gets firmly deposited/smeared onto the bottom of the shower. "Nice job, dumbass," I think to myself, stepping out of the shower to get the only other thing that will remove paint: Mean Green. Mean Green is sold at Dollar General for 2 bucks a bottle and I swear it would remove freckles if you scrubbed hard enough. Between the paint thinner and the cleaner, my bathroom would go up like a roadside gas station/fireworks store if there were ever a fire.

By the time I get back into the shower, there's a big gray puddle and a couple of perfect, Sasquatchian black footprints on the bathroom floor. I spray Mean Green on my feet and scrub with my ruined bath brush. Success! Well, success enough. My hands get the same treatment and then I scrub my hair and face. I step out of the shower feeling much, much better and ready to tackle the blackened hell that is my workroom. Until I see myself in the mirror. Where water had run through my eyebrows, there were two gray trails running down my face. There were black circles under my eyes a la Tammy Faye Bakker. The piece de resistance: a little black Hitler mustache, courtesy of breathing with a less than perfect ventilator, and the crunchy nose hair to match. Sexy, eh? I look at the clock: I have 20 minutes to get to work.

No freaking way.

I'm not proud of this part. I start concocting a lie that will justify taking a personal day. Oddly, "that's personal" doesn't seem to count as a valid excuse for needing a personal day. I call work and explain that I'm expecting the bed delivery guys this afternoon (truth) and there are going to be guys coming in to use the roof access hatch this morning and I don't trust them to be in my apartment when I'm not there (plausible lie). Having freed myself up for the day, I go and clean up the workroom with trusty life blood of Mean Green in hand.

By the time the bed guys arrive, the paint is dry, the work room is clean, and the bathroom is…passable. Sure, the apartment reeked like paint and I was still coughing up gray stuff, but I was at least able to answer the door without my little black Hitler moustache. The bed was set up that day. The nose hair was pliable the next morning.