painting, and then talking (at length) about painting

Once again, the romance of film and literature has misled me. This time, it was Fried Green Tomatoes (At The Whistle-Stop Cafe). I forget how it happened in the book (which is really worth reading; I'm a huge fan of the movie, for which Fannie Flagg co-wrote the screenplay, but you gotta read the book), but in the movie, I distinctly remember Ruth, with child, painting and being as involved in the setting up of the cafe as everybody else. So naturally, I've been entertaining visions of myself; pregnant, smiling, ready for work in a fabulous thirties outfit - bathed in golden light, painting walls and sweeping floors. IT WAS A LIE. Or maybe it was just the times; I conveniently forgot about the scene where she gives birth to Buddy and is promptly handed a beer (I WISH). Anyway, painting today was not as I had expected. Firstly, I didn't do any for a while, because I didn't want to put on my awful painting clothes (trackpants with that gathered elastic at the ankles that looks a bit like the fabric tops people put on jam jars when they sell marmalade at fairs), so I did an OCD job of putting masking tape on the light switches and power points (they now look impressively mummified). Then I took Joe for a walk. Then it was lunchtime. I'm a slow eater, and by the time I finished, there were only forty minutes left to work. So I put on my painting outfit (and immediately needed to pee, but didn't want to leave the shop and have people see my jam jar ankles, so I held it), and commenced cutting in. I've cut in before; around the skirting in my niece's first bedroom - it took me about an hour to do about two metres, after which I was retired. This time I was much faster, but ten minutes in started to feel woozy, which I blame on the baby - not its fault, but also totally its fault. Maybe (it was hot). I took a break, then tried again, which was when the headache began. I walked around the room for a bit with my brush and paint to make the most of having poured paint into a Subway cup (and not wanting to appear to be shirking, or to reclaim the title given to me several times during renovation projects ie tits on a bull), and gave up.

I thought about deleting this, but one day it might be interesting to see what paint and pregnancy can do to a person's brain. (I should assure you that I was only around the paint for about twenty minutes, that I wore one of those mask things for a while until it made breathing difficult and which I now realise protects against dust not fumes, and that I won't be doing any painting tomorrow or any other day before next March - unless it's outdoors, or my nails.) There is nothing simple about anything. I should have known that from Fried Green Tomatoes.