Stripping isn't what it used to be.

I used to be an expert stripper. Just ask my mom. I could take any piece of furniture, strip off all the paint, varnish, dirt and age and turn it into something beautiful and light that you'd be happy to have in your house.

Oh, you thought I was talking about something else.

Anyhow, that was when I was a younger woman, with more tolerance for caustic chemicals, more agile fingers and knees that didn't blow out if I tried to crouch too long. Today I undertook a project that showed my age in more ways than one, but proved that I can still have a tantrum worthy of a two-year-old if properly motivated.

First, though, I have to explain Starling woman projects. Some people are happy having as a project a little scrap booking weekend, or planting a flowerbed in fluffy moist soil. Not Starling women. We believe that a project should crush your will to live, should challenge all your physical and mental capabilities and should, if possible, send someone to the hospital with a bizarre (but non-life-threatening) injury.

My mother was always taking on this kind of project when we were younger. She'd wake up Saturday morning with a bolt, thinking to herself, "Today is the day we rip out the kitchen and reposition it on the roof! We should totally be able to finish that in two days!" or "I feel the urge to build a full-scale medieval trebuchet out of nothing but lawn clippings and guano! Go to it, kids!"

Of course, I exaggerate. Mom would never touch guano. But whatever the urge, it seems genetic. Yesterday morning, I woke with a bolt, thinking, "I'm going to strip and re-paint that chest in my bedroom! Surely I'll be finished by Sunday afternoon and can bask in the glow of my handiness while filling the beautiful chest with crisp bed linens!" (Where I was going to find crisp bed linens, I don't know. Mine are all kind of limp and pilly. I probably thought I'd have time left over to starch and iron mine.)

I thought I could crank this out because in my younger years (when I was recovering from a minor nervous breakdown) I refinished a couple of pieces that are still part of my furniture collection, even after 22 moves in the intervening years. So mom and I set out to buy all the supplies and after a few hours of shopping (turns out some of the supplies were clothes from Ann Taylor Loft), I was home and ready to go.

And that's when it all fell apart. This chest had three layers of intense oil paint on it, each nastier and more stubborn than the last. I spent hours on Saturday spreading, scraping and cursing the paint stripper, breathing in deadly toxic fumes and burning holes in myself. At one point, the stripper was eating through my gloves, so I had to make a choice which hand I liked least. (Take that sentence out of context and this gets weird again.) After a second run to the hardware store for better gloves, mineral spirits and more stripper, I went back to work. (I've got a fever and the only cure is...more stripper!)

This morning I woke up at 6:45, what I consider to be an unseemly hour for a Sunday, so I could bolt back into my bedroom and get back to work. (We slept in the guest room last night so as to survive. Those fumes are not kidding around.) Three hours later, I had to admit defeat. The top layer of paint turned into a substance not unlike toxic marshmallow fluff, while the bottom two layers stubbornly clung to the wood of the chest. I chipped the veneer in several places trying to scrape the paint away and every time I sat down to give my poor ancient knees a rest, I burned my leg or butt or foot or arm with paint stripper. Not to mention the brain cells I killed in the pursuit of bare wood. I need help brushing my teeth now.

The most demoralizing part is that the chest looks worse now than it did when I started. It has a few bare spots, but most of it looks like it's been crusted in, well, toxic half-melted paint. So I did what any sane adult woman would do. I threw a fit. I cried, I stormed around looking for a vacuum cleaner and I yelled at both my husband and my mother. All my work toward a calm, centered self went right out the window, which is nearly where I threw the vacuum cleaner in a fit of rage. Not my best moment.

But, now that I've had time to consider the ill-fated project, I've realized one thing. I'm not as young as I used to be. Oh, and some things you should leave to professionals, like stripping. Both furniture and the other kind.

(Oh, did you miss me? Because I missed you....)