Wrong Color; Wrong Directions.......

I didn't post anything yesterday. I was busy. I was very, very, busy...but I accomplished almost nothing. It was one of those days.

Yesterday was David's day off. We had plans. Big, productive plans. And while some of them were accomplished, most of the day was spent taking a step backwards.

7:20 a.m. - we're out the door to drop Hunter off at school and run some errands...a new headlamp for the truck....and we needed to hit the Fresh Meat Market to finish off the grocery shopping, we planned on hitting the paint store for the bathroom paint, and we planned on hitting some salvage yards to see about a replacement for the toilet that got smashed to smithereens this past week.....We decide to get some breakfast....we don't get much dating in anymore...so we steal moments whenever we can....the stolen moments were wonderful, the food not so much (check that restaurant off the good food list!). We hit the meat market and we go and buy the paint....but then, we realize that we need salt for the water system and a new belt for the vacuum.....so we hit Walmart....

and then we drive home...completely forgetting about visiting the salvage yards. No worries, we have plenty to do in the bathroom until we can find the hours necessary to search out a toilet.

We rush through morning chores and then get started upstairs....I grab the paint and paraphernalia and hit the outside of Hunter's door with it (we're painting all the trim in the landing to match the bead board of the bathroom)....and, it's not quite the color I thought it would be.

Maybe its the lighting? So I finish up that door and the trim around it and move to the closet door across from Hunter's room ....and while the lighting is different, the color actually looks even further from the one I had pictured....

I stop painting to eat some lunch, spend a nice 30 minutes talking to my father on the phone, and then go up to check the dried paint....it is awful. It looks like crayola yellow instead of the deep bronzed gold I was going for. I give it all a second coat hoping that that will deepen the color.......and check it again about an hour later to find it's still .....awful.

Landing Closet Door - as we drove into town, I found a spot of paint on my hand...as we drove past a median last night, I pointed out that this color looked identical to that color!

Hunter's Bedroom Door - crayola crayon yellow? Big Bird Yellow? Street Paint Yellow? All I know is it is NOT the color I thought I had picked out!

5 p.m. - Hunter's at a birthday party that ends at 6:30 - he'd gone directly from school with several other classmates. We need to return the head lamps for the truck (cuz the salesman steered David in the wrong direction!) so we plan on leaving early, going back to Benjamin Moore for the right paint color and then, if there was time, driving around looking at some old houses until picking up Hunter.

We get the right headlamps, head to Benjamin Moore - they're closed already. So we drive over the bridge and decide to make sure we know exactly how to find where the Club House where the Birthday Party was located..last year, the party had been held at the girl's home and this year, a phone call to RSVP and get directions and ending time (not included in the invitation!) revealed that the location had changed but that the new place would be found just before the entrance to their subdivision...I wrote it on down on the back of the card and had placed it in my purse for that "just in case" situation......

I had plans....to be the good mom who is never late to pick up her child.....

I had covered the possibility of getting lost by having my cell and the directions in my purse.....but, then I reached in my purse to get the card with the directions I'd gotten the previous day from the mom....to discover it wasn't there and neither was my cell phone! I'd accidentally left both of them on the kitchen table when I had taken them out of my purse to look for the headlamp receipt.....

No worries, I remembered what the mom had told me, after all, she'd told me I couldn't "miss it" since I'd been to the party last year - so we proceeded to look for the Club House.....thirty minutes later, we haven't found it - no one seems to have heard of the place and we are stressed to the max....we found the entrance to the Gated Community where they lived, but the guard has no clue as to where this club house is, and has no information about any party under the name of Hunter's classmate - it is now 6:30 and we're looking at driving 25 minutes back to our place to get the card and call to explain.

Off we go on the drive back to our place....we call the mom only to find out that she had NOT given me the complete directions...there were two entrances to their gated community and the Club House was "just before" the second one, not the one she had had us all use last year....and, that entrance was on a completely different street................we had been no where near where we should have been...............The truth is that even with the directions she had given me during my phone call to her to get said directions would NOT have helped us find the place.....but IF I'd had my cell phone, I would have at least been able to call her........

There is no real moral to this story...at least where the paint color is concerned cuz we've all watched HGTV and seen where even the professional designers have chosen a color that doesn't look the same on the wall as it did on the chip or someone has accidentally broken an essential part of a project...stuff like that happens....and we've all been steered in the wrong direction by a salesperson at one time or another.....stuff like that happens too.

But, IF I had to chose a moral, it would be this...Hosts of parties should always give complete directions on their invitations....and one should never, ever forget their cell phone!

I sure am glad today is another day................but that paint color is still awful!