Stage one: amputating Aggressive Floral Wallpaper™ from the wall. (For complete understanding of my hatred and loathing, see the entry from two days ago.)

Now, granted, my vantage point is not the greatest. On a good day and with a straight spine, I'm somewhere around 5'1", but I can't actually tell you my exact height because I don't know it. All family jokes about large spitfires in short packages aside, I'm apparently not the person you want critiquing your wallpapering job.Despite the fact that I don't actually feel short, my friends take pleasure in frequently reassuring me that, despite my aspirations to standard height, I am still definitely a round, pint-sized niblet. The fact that my shoes provide me an additional 1" of height probably shouldn't be…oops.

So much for that 'secret.'

Anyway, tales of height-challenges aside, I got up on the ladder this morning to start ripping that wallpaper down and, not only was it uglier when I got up close and personal with it, it was the worst application of wallpaper I've ever seen. There's something really pathetic about being too cheap to buy a third roll of wallpaper (maybe another $7 at most) and instead of pattern-matching, just splicing on whatever's left on the roll.

Stage two: abject, blatant, and pathetic bribery of taller/stronger friends to move the 6.8-ton couch approximately two feet away from the wall, so that I can move a ladder behind it. I'm not above standing on the back of a couch to strip border / repaint the offending blue stripe, but I'm definitely above falling off on it and breaking my neck.

It may be ugly border, but last time I checked, it wasn't worth dying for.

(oh, and something special for you that read the small print: Edmund the pup seal, snuggling up in the clean laundry for once. Also, definitive proof that while the boys are similar, they are not identical.)