My House is YELLOW!

I should not be allowed in a paint store ever again and I am really, really peturbed at Menard's! I bought 2 gallons of paint last week for the house. One yellow and white for the trim. Due to this extremely rainy weather, we didn't put it on the house until last night.

When we did, it looked extremely light. If it was yellow, it was an extreme pastel version. It didn't look at all like the house in the picture. But I thought hey, it has to go over some really dark gray paint. Shawn and I finished almost a whole side when we ran out and I was sent back to Menards for more.

When I pulled the color card. ARGH! Golden Fleece is a dark shade of off-white. What's up with that? Nothing like the house with the white picket fence in the picture! So now I have color fear and I stand there contemplating colors for at least another 15 minutes. I want yellow - a more on the pastel side, but not too bright. I do not trust the cards.

Finally I pick one and get the 7 gallons of Dusty Straw and 3 gallons of Delicate White. Not before pointing out to the Menard's guy that color chip and the house in the picture are 2 very different colors. He says it's all the lighting. I am thinking to myself this picture could only have been shot in the Caribbean for off-white to look yellow.

Anyway, I don't make it home before 10 pm so our painting has to wait until the next day.

So the weather is not exactly cooperating..it's too cold. We have to wait until it gets above 50 degrees. That means we don't get started until 10am. We put a on a second coat and while this is more yellow...its another very light yellow. Shawn asks me if this is the right color. At this point, I say yeah, because I think - I've been tricked again and frankly, don't care. I just want this house to get painted so I can sell it.

At noon, the mail comes and it reminds me to go pick up my friend's mail. I go do that and pick up some lunch for us. Shawn calls just as I am turning into the development. He hangs up before I can answer and when I call back Brianna answers. I ask what Dad wanted - she says something about the house being yellow. I think great! The house looks finally looks yellow after 2 coats.

I arrive home to a big swatch of yellow on the garage siding. No mistaking this yellow and it is THE shade of yellow on the card! Shawn is freaking, because he thinks this color is too dark. But it is THE shade. I am elated, but ticked at the same time. We go into the garage and open all the cans. 4 cans of white, 6 cans of yellow, 1 can of the extreme pastel yellow. Apparently, Menards didn't get enough yellow tint in the one of the cans.

The good news was we used that can first so now our second coat would be the right color. The bad news was that we had wasted our morning painting that color on 1/2 the house. Good thing it needs 2 coats. Sigh.



Once we start on the yellow yellow, we are feeling much better. I am impressed that Shawn did not yell at me or be mad. I would've been so it is to his credit. This yellow looks really good and by the end of the day, we have 1 coat on 3 sides of the house, 2.5 of those have 2 coats.

Tomorrow is the 2 story side and the trim(after finishing off the other 1.5 sides).

Rain Rain Go Away

It's been raining for what seems like weeks. The weather really affects DH...lack of sunlight. He has slowed down in his cleaning up activities(but really he's done great). He's been really tired and really into EverQuest.

The lack of warmth and abundance of rain has slowed down outside work on the house that really needs to be done. No planting. No painting of the house. No staining of the deck. No mowing of the grass. Argh! It's so frustrating.

Today the sun came out. Yea! I can only hope that this weekend and next will be nice. There is no way we are going to be able to make the June 1st date...maybe the 10th or 15th. DH said we would be ready for sure by July 1. I am pushing for an earlier completion date.

So rain, rain go away!

Secrets

Less than 15 days to go until the house goes on the market and it is a mess. Stuff in piles everywhere. I cannot bear to part with scrapbooking stuff. I have tons. There are 3 totes full in the basement, 3 in the pod, and one sitting at my feet. This does not include 2 scrapbook bags and the stuff in the green cabinent and more. Why this attachment to all this stuff?

I think I know the answer. I like to think of myself as an artist. I like to think I will create some great work of art that all the scrapbook mags will be clamoring for, but the truth is I will got to a crop and create minimialist pages. I get all kinds of great ideas at the store for what I could use this or that for...only to have them evaporate the minute I walk through my front door.

I just like to sift through my stuff dreaming of the possiblities. A masterpiece to be sure is in there waiting to be assembled. Somehow things never come together as I envisioned. So I stick to the safe linear style with minimal embellishment. I am what some in the 2Peas Pub would call Dull.

I am a gal that loves the possiblities and has trouble acting because chosing one path negates another. I have to have all the possiblities all the time. I can't pack things away, because I might need them for one of my circle journals or for a page I may want to create.

But on there is something that goes much deeper than that. I feel like I can't express myself. Letting out our secret would be disloyal and I am loyal to a fault. So I can't really create pages about the true us.

We have this depression thing in our house. Megan has anxiety. I have my shyness. We are weird. We live in the boonies in a neighborhood with no kids. Getting together with any of my friends or arranging play dates is just way too much effort and driving. So with this move I am trying to make up for something that I didn't know was important. I am hoping to get us more in the mainstream. I hope it's not too late. I hope we aren't the weird people in the new neightborhood.

The Unexpected - Good and Bad

This has been a busy week....full of surprises. The first is that DH seems to be fully on board with the whole moving thing. We are driving through new developments and he is saying things like "In our new house..." I was a little frustrated at first that he didn't seem to be doing much on the garage...but wow! He has gotten rid of a lot of stuff. Our 16' storage box is coming this week...I think that will help keep the momentum moving. I am proud of him!

The next surprise...Megan. I was worried most about her with the move. She is prone to anxiety and has had a couple full-blown anxiety attacks...at 9! She frequently complains that the kids at school think she's weird and that she has so few friends. DH talked with her about the move and she said that there was nobody at school that she was really that attached to at school. She is looking forward to having her own room.

Brianna, on the other hand, was crying on the way home from soccer this week. She doesn't want to move out of the boundary where her middle school will be next year. This took me by total surprise. She has had mostly boys for friends all through elementary school. Now this year in 5th grade, she met Nicole. Nicole plays hockey. Nicole is a tomboy like Brianna. In Brianna's words..."Mom, she just gets me." How lucky to have a friend that gets her. I hate to break up that friendship.

I feel sad that I can't afford to buy a house in Nicole's neighborhood or even the type of house I want within the school boundaries. It is $40,000 or $50,000 more to live in a new house in my own burb. The neighboring burb I can get much more house...but that means a new elementary school for Megan and a new middle school for Brianna. Probably a new soccer team for Brianna, too.

We need to move this house is just too small and too dark. We have to move for DH's health. I just wish I could come up with an extra $50,000 or $100,000 for this house. It would make things so much easier.