What's in a Canvas?

I love painting. I love painting animals and people, flowers and trees. I love painting fantasy scenes, illustrations, or whimsical things like carousel horses. I hate painting walls.
I didn't learn this until about two years ago when we painted part of our house. The house is new, (or at least it was when we moved into it) but the paint the builder used is the kind that comes off onto the rag you're trying to wipe the wall clean with. Not a good thing under any circumstance, but add two dogs into the mix and you have a fairly bad situation.
It was the first time I'd painted walls in my life. Between the meticulous (and extremely boring, I thought) taping of edges and baseboards, plastic dropsheets everywhere and moving everything from the walls, I was already not a big fan before I even put roller to wall. Then there are the gobs of paint everywhere, seemingly no matter how careful we try to be. Spatters on the floor, on faces, arms, legs and feet. But the worse part was the actual painting itself. Hours of doing nothing but sweeping the roller up and down, side to side. And then aching for days afterwards, and having to move everything back.
But, like I said, it can't be helped. The horrible base paint must be covered, and so this last weekend, we rolled up our sleeves to start doing the rest of the house. It was the same scenario, except this time our little Keani kept trying to sneak in to investigate what we were up to, and then crying when we wouldn't let him in.
But I have to admit, when all's said and done, and despite the annoyance of everything...the end result was worth it.