The Blue Paint Day

 

It all started on a Wednesday… I was having an extremely unproductive day. Often I found myself staring at my computer, yelling at characters who have decided to go on their own adventurous path – not the one I carefully laid out for them.

 I decided to do some laundry, so that I would at least have something to show for the stagnant day. I put the load on and went back to stare at my computer for the forty minutes until it was done. I hear the beeping and, on the way there, decide I need to take a long walk to clear my head so I can keep writing. However, when I enter the garage I feel a horrid squish. I find I am ankle deep in a sea of soapy water now seeping into all of our hoarded boxes (boxes we refuse to get rid of and refuse to unpack because we move so much.) I know immediately what has happened. In my I-am-angry-that-writing-is-not-going-well-and-taking-it-out-on-the-laundry-state, I had flung a sock into the sink. I thought I removed it but I had not and, since that is where the water drains with each cycle, it had formed a nice plug and every full load of water was now on the floor of the garage.

I call Al at work and give him a heart attack because I lead with “Is there any way you could come home from work?” Plus, my voice was a little panicky. We spend his entire lunch break(and I spend the rest of my afternoon), mopping up the suds and moving boxes from one side of the garage to the other and trying to figure out how to get the water mopped up from under the sink which has a quarter inch gap between it and the floor. (We are geniuses at this point because we came up with a towel wrapped around a homemade “girls rule” sign. And really, girls do rule…) Anyway this, combined with the fact that we got the free old fridge from Al’s work, meant we had to clean the garage. Our weekend plans were thus solidified: awesome day with friends/movies swapping on one day and horrible cleaning out garage the other day.

The “other” day arrives. In order to get us all motivated, I decide we should eat breakfast out. That way the kitchen stays clean (because there is nothing worse than returning from the clean garage to melted cheese-encrusted bowls and chips crumbled and crunching under your feet. (I am not sure why there are always chips on the carpet; my daughter swears it is not her but I don’t find I am swinging bags of chips in an arch until the crumbs fling out everywhere. Perhaps I am: it could be subconscious but, either way, there are always chips on our carpet.)

So, off we go to the cafe. Al orders a gluten-free pasta salad which, as he said “has no taste… absolutely no taste. It’s like they tried to find all ingredients that taste like nothing and put them in my bowl.”

I had a yummy muffin and Amelia had nachos.

As we arrive at the Warehouse (for US readers: Wal-Mart equivalent, still crappy stuff but way over priced.) We make the fateful decision to allow Amelia to redecorate her room, moving from princess (which she has loathed for a couple years now) to a style more fitting a 10 year old. This seemed like a good idea at the time; however the pricing and thought of spending the day assembling “some assembly required” furniture will be a waste of money and time, so we end up negotiating over colors of five-dollar, cheaply-made boxes and decide to repaint her current pink furniture blue. This whole process leaves Alan almost comatose as far as his ability to make any decisions and me bordering on murderous rage because no decisions are being made. It is 1pm and we still haven’t started on the post-war-zone garage.

As we stand staring at the various plastic bins we initially passed by, we are approached by an elderly gentleman wearing a bike helmet. Not particularly odd except that he is not currently on a bike and he is wearing it unclasped and backwards so the large pointy end is sticking out at us.

Here is the conversation:

‘Man, these bins are great aren’t they?’

Alan and I nod. ‘Yes we sure like them.’

‘Yeah, amazing! I just got one of those trailers for my bike. I was thinking of getting one of these for the back.’

Alan starts squinting, trying to picture how the large bin would fit in one of those.

‘Oh cool!’ I say.

‘Yeah, you guys should get one of those! It just attaches to the back of your bike and you can go anywhere. I am thinking of taking this camping!’

Al is looking very skeptical and opens his mouth so before he says something mean I jump in.

‘Wow, camping, that sounds fun.’ Alan crinkles his brow at me and shakes his head. This guy should not be going camping with a plastic bin and a bike trailer.

‘Well, excuse me. I’ll just grab one of these he says taking one and then gives us the website for the bike trailers just in case…’

We head home after purchasing blue paint from a guy with Ed Sheeran lyrics tattooed up his arm (which I found a little strange… Not that I don’t like Ed Sheeran. In fact, I REALLY like Ed Sheeran: I am just not sure I would tattoo his lyrics up my arm. Because even if some of his lyrics may really speak to you, you have to wonder, will they still speak to you when your skin is saggy and you have way more wisdom? This may just be an argument against tattoos and have nothing to do with the content of tattoos but really the content is the tattoo…) Anyway, we arrive home and get started.

Amelia begins painting and we start grumbling about the mountain of plastic broken toys that she has to keep for “the new baby”. I am not pregnant but she is convinced one is on the way… so is saving everything from the previously mentioned princess room, in case “the new baby is into girly stuff” which Amelia would like made clear she is NOT anymore and actually on more than one occasion has been very worried the “new baby will be into princess stuff and where will that leave them with nothing to talk about, that’s what!”

Anyway she begins to complain that she is not feeling well but we tell her to “just quickly finish – it should just take you ten minutes; that way we can wash everything out”. This is followed by an increase in sighing and grumbling under the breath but, as per our policy, we don’t pay much attention.

This turns out to be a mistake. When one of us looks up from being buried in Barbie dolls with amputated limbs we see that the grumbling was just the light breezes that precede a tornado. She has taken her frustration out on the paint and it is now soaking into the cement up and down the driveway (we have a home inspection from the landlord this coming week, which in and of itself is a ray of sunshine!), all over her new shoes (which she took off because we said don’t get paint on them) and slopping over the top of the bookshelf which was supposed to remain green. We now (“gently” and not yelling of course because we are outside and so are the neighbors) inform her that she must scrub the paint off the driveway while I try to fix the bookshelf, which Amelia has painted in large globs rather than smooth strokes. She spends the next hour crying and scrubbing like our own little Cinderella, saying she doesn’t feel well to which we say “ha! That is convenient….” We spend the time, as we continue to throw broken walky-talkies and lost headbands at each other for sorting, monologuing  about how important it is for her to finish cleaning off the driveway so she learns the valuable lesson of taking the time to do something right… (We are very proud of our parenting skills. And the tough love.)

The next two days she is home from school, sick… I finished painting the bookshelves and am no longer sure I am qualified to be a parent.