Close Only Counts in Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

On Sunday, like most, we spent the day in Challuabamba.  However, our plan was not to relax, but to work.  Since our wedding will be held there in less than two months, some beautifying needs to be done.  Nothing major, but a coat of paint here and a bunch of flowers there.  I was under the impression that Sunday was going to be just a flower day.  It wasn't.

After telling me that we would not be painting, Carlos decided that he wanted to paint.  There is a small house on the property for the kids to play in that was a bit faded.  We thought it would be a perfect background for photos.  So the first challenge was to choose the paint color.  We must have spent almost an hour in the paint shop because every time we came to a decision, we were told something like, "oh, those colors are for the interior, not exterior," or "sorry, we only sell these by the gallon, not the pint, " or " well, the oil based paints cost three times what the water based paints cost."

But we got the paint.  However, the next challenge was attire.  I was not wearing clothes to paint in, but to plant in.  I had told Carlos that I would wear different clothes if we were painting but he assured me that we were not.  So after riffling through a few drawers I ended up wearing Carlos's high school gym uniform.

This is were we get into the "close only counts" problem.  I had been wearing a t-shirt and pants.  In that attire I put sunscreen on my arms.  But the gym uniform was a tank top, thus my shoulders were not protected...

But wait, there's more.  Since I usually wear pants, I thought that I would only put bug repellent on my ankles and lower legs, because that it where, in the past I had gotten bitten.  That was another mistake because instead I was bitten in the back of my knee...

The bulge that is a bit above and to the right of my knee is not a muscle.  It's swelling.  There are these bugs whose bites cause, at least in me, lots of pain and swelling.  The kind of pain that keeps you up at night if you run out of Benedryl.  The kind of swelling that makes you unable to cross your legs because any pressure causes the aforementioned pain.  And even though the first 24-48 hours are unbearable, the bites can cause discomfort for about a week to 10 days.

Anyway, you'll need to wait for next week to see how the house looks.