The one where I seriously considered posting a picture of my robot -ified buttocks.

One of the less-fortunate side effects of renting, rather than owning, the place where I live is that my internal Weekend Warrior is eternally getting shafted. I have no gutters to clean, no screens to mend, no yard to landscape or garden to plant. And while this might sound nice to any homeowning readers, as far as I’m concerned, the situation is getting rather dire. With no other outlet, my thwarted DIY madness has started expressing itself during visits to my parents, when I find myself screeching with delight at the prospect of mowing their lawn (!) or raking mulch (!!) or pulling some weeds (OMG YES!!!!). Last year, when we were trying to get the yard ready for my wedding, I nearly peed my pants with joy when my father asked for my help shoveling a pile of dirt.

On the one hand, I realized that this is slightly sick.
On the other, I am like three seconds away from carrying a trowel stuffed into my pants at all times in the hope that someone, at some point, will ask me to dig a hole.

Anyway, that scene-setting is just my circuitous way of explaining that I had a day off last week, and instead of lying around all day with a beer in one hand, a jar of peanut butter in the other, and a bag of Cheetos stapled to my face, I opted to paint the roof of my apartment building.

A note: Said roof-painting was actually really, reeeeeally necessary. Because my landlord is the world’s most lackadaisical assbag, and our building was (as far as I can tell) the only one for miles that lacked a rooftop coating of reflective paint, temperatures in our top-floor apartment were starting to reach upwards of 90 degrees on a daily basis. And while this is technically not our responsibility, doing it ourselves was highly preferable to the alternative – namely, several months’ worth of our assy landlord hemming and hawing and hedging, and then finally hiring some random friend of a friend who agrees to paint the roof for half the cost of anyone else, which seems like a really great deal, until it becomes apparent that the reason for his affordability is directly related to his propensity for drinking the paint rather than applying it to the intended surface.

So, armed with a six-pack of beer and feeling rather like we were about to reenact the “tarring the roof” scene from The Shawshank Redemption, Brad and I clambered up to the rooftop where the industrial-sized bucket of aluminum paint was waiting for us. And paint, we did! And we executed the job quite nicely, despite the brief interlude in which Brad got a little too into the role of “Evil Screw Who Threatens to Throw Tim Robbins Off the Roof”, and the fact that my roller extension broke halfway through, and the eensy-weensy mishap in which, uh, somebody accidentally threw the top of the paint bucket off the roof and into a nearby construction zone.

Not that we would know anything about that.

And now? Well, the roof looks fabulous, and our apartment is at least 10 degrees cooler, and the effort was totally worth it.

Or at least that is what I keep telling myself, because it helps distract me from the fact that: a) I somehow managed to cover my entire ass in reflective paint, b) I have no idea how I managed it but am nevertheless deeply concerned that something is seriously wrong with me, and c) it still won’t come off.

As noted above, I briefly toyed with the idea of displaying my be-painted aluminized ass for all to see, but common sense won out, so instead I'll just show you this:

Me, immediately post-painting and looking like I’ve just concluded a fight to the death with the T-1000. The battle was clearly won through the ingenious use of a hand grenade.