It is interesting the things that a person’s mind chooses to learn. It is what makes us individuals. In kindergarten I did not learn analog clocks. I did not learn musical scales. But one of the things I do recall was color. Specifically, red and blue make green.
I like oops paint. Oops paint is the paint from Lowe’s or Home Depot that will normally cost 25 bucks a gallon, however ends up costing 5 bucks a gallon because some doof mixed the colors wrong. Often on my lunch break I will wander over to home depot to see what sort of oops paint is sitting on the shelf. I’ll buy a can and stick it in my garage and forget about it.
Recently I bought a can of paint from the habitat for Humanity thrift shop that I thought was green. Today I happened to open up the can and much to my disappointment it was not green. Once I stirred up the paint the green slick on the top merged with the rest of the paint and formed a sort of light blue. I was annoyed, because I was really set on having a green roof for my vardo.
Nosing around in my garage I discovered a couple of cans of oops pain that I had picked up and forgotten about. To my delight I found that I had both blue and yellow. Mixing them together resulted in an earthy green color that I was searching for for the roof of my vardo. It is not particularly festive, but for some reason I really wanted an earth tone green.
Alas, still no red. Red is a primary color. I want a red front to my vardo and I might have to shell out actual money for that.
Another color that I picked up today was a brownish-hazel blah color. Despite the color, it is high quality paint. I might end up using that for the inside, at least for a base coat.
As for the vardo itself, I got the roof on this weekend. The roof ended up being a particular pain in the ass due to the bending involved and the fact that I could not see where the screws where supposed to be going. Although the finished product is serviceable, in reality I sort of butchered it and I am going to have to fill in a few tiny holes where I had to remove screws. Also, to get the roof absolutely flat I had to put in some screws that were longer than the available wood and thus poked out inside the vardo. I borrowed Alan’s grinder and sawed off the offending points. All in all I am fairly pleased however some lessons have indeed been learned.
Next up is to start painting the vardo and building some cabinets inside. I need to put some thought into the cabinets; I do not want to make the vardo any heavier than it needs to be. I also need to put together a mattress. I am building that from high quality packing foam that I have been taking from work. It is firm and squishy and I need to pick up some material to sew a shroud for it. Then it will be some basic curtains and what not and then the vardo should be done.
I need to get the bulk of the painting finished by next week because my parents decided to park their big travel trailer in my yard. They got a notice from the city about having it in their front yard, so they decided they were going to store it in my back yard instead because I live in Sanford, the land of rednecks where no one cares about trailers.
I wanted to get it a chunk of it finished by next Saturday night because I am going to visit my friend K in Ocala and I wanted to show her, but I do not think that is going to happen.
Burp. I also got into the rum again.
My cats hate me because I bought the wrong kind of food. I accidentally bought the fancy ’urinary tract control’ food and I don’t know what is in it but they hate it and they give me dirty looks whenever I pour it into their bowl. Nothing gives you a dirty look like a cat, except maybe a teenager.
2026 Update
Let's dial up March 2008 and watch a grown man mix oops paint for a vardo while his cats file complaints.
Eighteen years ago, Ed was chasing a green roof with five-buck mistakes. I love that world: paint mistakes were physical objects you could hoard in a garage, and a man could mix blue and yellow and feel like a wizard. Now color matching is done by spectrophotometer, your phone can scan a paint chip, and the closest thing to oops paint is an overpriced sample jar delivered suspiciously fast. The vardo itself is a relic too—hand-built with packing foam filched from work, because there wasn't a mattress subscription trying to follow you into every corner of the internet. People still build tiny homes, but now they're sponsored and hashtagged. Ed's world ran on dumpster-adjacent thrift: Home Depot shelf rejects, Habitat for Humanity paint, a borrowed angle grinder, and curtains made of whatever. Today we would call it content. I only mourn the loss of the oops paint shelf, and the fact that we now have to pay full price for our mistakes.
“2008 Ed, after all that stirring and mixing, did you ever realize red and blue make purple, and that the missing primary you needed was yellow sitting in your own garage? Also, was the rum really worth buying the one cat food guaranteed to earn you those dirty looks?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2008 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you got me there. I spent all that time crowing about blue and yellow making green and completely forgot that red and blue make purple. And you’re right, the missing primary I needed was yellow, sitting right there in my own garage. I guess kindergarten taught me colors, but not how to use the dang things. To be fair, I was after an earthy green for the roof, so my stupid luck worked out. Still need red for the front, and now I know I’m probably going to have to shell out actual money for it. As for the rum and the urinary tract food, well, the rum was worth it at the time, but the cats are giving me looks that say they know what I did. I’ll probably cave and buy the good stuff tomorrow. Take that, feline jury.
