Adventures in the Apartment Complex

So, this post is a brief intermission between tales of moving. I have plenty of before and after pictures of painting to show you, but I took my computer apart and it won't be back until Sunday at the earliest, so you'll just have to wait on those.

BTW, how can no one have told me how much painting sucks? Seriously? I mean, here I was thinking it would be fun. Um, no. There was no fun. It was sucky. I agree with bsj and if anyone knows a boy that I can marry who enjoys painting, and a job I can get where I travel a lot, I'm in. Painting = suck. Especially the taping. Sample conversation:

"[Insert Boy's name here], why am I taping? It's my new place...how come I don't get to do the fun painting?"
"Because taping is the bitch work, and you're the bitch."
"Point taken."

I did eventually get to paint (and it wasn't fun painting)...and then I found out that I'm really really bad at it. Either that or the boy is just really really good at it. (It does have direct relation to his job...) I don't know if it was just the patience thing...or the fact that the color I used was darker... Whatever. My kitchen (that I painted) was super streaky and my bedroom (that he painted) looked perfect. We had to go back for a second coat in the kitchen to cover my mistakes. My kitchen is now YELLOW! (or GOLDENROD if you want to be really specific.) Whatever. My accent wall kicks ass. You'll see...

This morning when I was walking the dogs, we came across this:

It's not a great picture, but I would say the sucker was about a foot and a half to two feet across at his widest. Seeing as how my only experience with a turtle was a box turtle that I "rescued" from my backyard and took into science class in the eighth grade (and named "Louis" by the way. "Louis the Turtle" to be exact) and given the fact that this turtle bared little to no resemblance to Louis, and in fact had a large tail that was alarmingly similar to an alligator tail, I figured this was not a turtle to mess with.

Since the turtle was just chilling in my apartment complex, a good quarter mile from the nearest pond, I originally thought he was just a lawn decoration. Casey pranced up to the turtle with an "Oh, hello weird other living organism" expression. When the turtle hissed at her, I regained my senses and pulled her away from it. I then rushed home, took a picture on my cell phone (excuse the crappiness of the picture) and called the boy to ask what the heck sort of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle I had stumbled across.

Imagine my dismay to find out that it is a very ordinary snapping turtle. (Well, a very ordinary snapping turtle that could have taken Casey's nose off had I not removed her from striking distance.) Alas, all my dreams of having a new species of turtle named after Casey have been shattered. (I still think that alligator tail is freaky. You should have seen it in real life.) The boy went on and on (and on and on) about what he would have done with the turtle (put it on our enclosed porch) so that he could "rescue" it and return it to the nearest pond after work. Whatever. I wasn't picking up that thing. When my cat hisses at Casey, she gets scratched. When geese hiss at me, they charge me and are MEAN. I wasn't about to see what this mutant turtle did after hissing. No sir. I like having 10 fingers.

I have since decided that the mutant turtle will be called "Bob" and that we can just hope that Bob is still around when the boy and I get home. After all, think about how much fun the post will be when the boy attempts to move Bob and suffers Bob's wrath? I'll be right there taking pictures for you all...(when I'm not saving the bitten off piece of finger on ice so that the doctors in the ER can sew it back on.) We can only dream...