Painting, Or Not

I spent nearly the entire day in the 309 cottage, painting.  Deb got a break from painting today as the thrift store was open. So she disappeared with the other women, the other two guys went to finish painting an outdoor railing and a ramp on the Flemington house and I did the cut-in painting in the back bedroom and the bathroom of 309.  A bathroom has a lot to paint around.  And when the paint doesn’t quite cover the color underneath, it has to be done twice.

I’m not the world’s best painter.  I’ll do a decent job, but it takes me a while.  It is not my favorite activity.  But part of the SOWER song we sing every morning  speaks of doing our best, and it isn’t for me, it’s for the Lord, so I paint on...

Do then the best you can, not for reward,
Not for the praise of man but for the Lord.

I finally closed up the can and cleaned up at 2:30 and declared it done.  The other guys by this time had removed all the heating vent covers from the ceiling of the cafeteria and had taken them to the shop to be sandblasted and painted.  They were starting to show some rust and needed to be cleaned up.  I joined them at the shop and started filling the sandblaster with sand.

Unfortunately, the sand was rather wet and would clump up frequently, requiring the hopper for the sandblaster to be shaken vigorously in order to feed any sand at all.  My arms wore out before the job was finished.  Austin told us he would get some dry sand tomorrow morning. Ron painted the ones that were done so we could have most of them in place when everyone came in for lunch tomorrow.

When I got back to the RV, my back was hurting because of the acrobatics required to paint in a small bathroom and from shaking several pounds of sand for nearly an hour.

Deb spent the morning sorting and pricing items in the thrift store.  She finds that preferable to painting.  She again described it as way understaffed.  As a result, there’s too much stuff in the back room and not enough stuff on the floor.  Patti, who runs the place, has been sick for the last few days and wasn’t feeling all that great today so even those that are there are not operating at peak performance.

We decided to check out Dale’s Seafood today, one of the few restaurants in Lake Waccamaw.  It comes recommended by some of the locals.  Deb had the shrimp special and I had the flounder.  I figured if I go to a seafood restaurant I should at least order some seafood and I’m not real big on shrimp or crustaceans.

Although the presentation could be better, the fish was very good.  It was a little hard to eat as it was placed on a very small plate with all the French fries piled on top of it.  The result was  a very precarious mountain on a small plate with no place to put a dollop of ketchup for the fries.  But it was delicious and a fun time going out to eat.  One thing that came with the meal that’s a very southern thing: Hush Puppies.  Something we don’t see in our parts.  They were quite good when slathered with whipped butter and honey.

So I’m expanding my palette.  Flounder and Hush Puppies.  Two things I haven’t had before.

Now we’re back in the RV and I’m watching a couple people riding horses around in the arena right in front of us.  There’s a couple more RVs and horse trailers parked around here.  The biggest event of the year starts tomorrow: barrel racing. People come from all over for this. All the RV sites here were booked up before we even got here so we will be moving into what appears to be a horse pasture for a few days while this event rages on.