The Jukebox in My Mind

... an entry in which there is no knitting, because my hands are too sore from holding a paintbrush.

We are still working on the kitchen. All the trim is now done. It was a HUGE job, and when I say huge, I mean 40+ cabinet doors and drawer fronts. It's a small kitchen, which makes it all the more amazing to me that there were so many pieces. We took them all off, removed the hardware, painted it all and the framework, and then put them back up today. It's looking good! Normally I'd be unhappy about painting over wood grain, but much of this was in very bad shape - uncleanable; painting was the right solution. The white brightens everything up and makes the room look bigger, and when the pale yellow goes on the walls it will all look so crisp. It will maintain the vintage atmosphere of the house (50's / 60's era) and be retro-modern at the same time.

When you are working without background noise, what goes through your mind? Of course there are things to think about, and I do. But when I'm not actively concentrating on anything, there is apparently a jukebox in my mind that is set to "random." Here's a sampling from the past few days:

Minnie the Moocher
If I Had a Hammer
Mingulay
The Crawdad Song
Nagasaki
Sh-Boom
Danny Boy (as sung by the Muppets)

I have heard that the technical name for this (getting a song stuck in your head) is "earworm." Maybe that applies here and maybe it doesn't; each song stays around for a little bit, then eventually changes to something else. It amuses me to no end.

Here's another positive thing about working on an older house: sometimes you find cool stuff. I came across a 1950 mystery novel in the basement. It's entitled "The Bride of Newgate," by John Dickson Carr. Here's the description from the flap:

Dick Darwent, ex-fencing master, was waiting in a dark cell of Newgate Prison -- waiting to be hanged.

While Dick waited for the hangman, Lady Caroline Ross, rich, cold and beautiful, prepared a champagne breakfast to celebrate her marriage to him, a marriage which would cost her fifty pounds, and which would be ended an hour after it had begun.

But a shot through a bathroom window, where a lovely lady sat in a tub of milk --
a riot in the opera, led by champion pugilists --
a pistol duel at dawn --
and a mysterious coachman, whose cloak was shiny with graveyard mold --
changed everything!

As did Napoleon Bonaparte!

I was intrigued. (I think it was the "As did Napoleon Bonaparte!" that did it.) The story could be fabulous, or it could be fabulously terrible. Or it could be so terrible it's fabulous. Now I must read it to find out.