Do You Hear What I Hear?

There was a shuffling of meetings earlier in the week and technically I still had some vacation time left so I did the minimal amount of work things I needed to do yesterday from home and then spent the rest of the day cleaning my house.

Really cleaning my house.

Since my home renovation there's been a constant layer of dust on everything and boxes of knickknacks and furniture stacked in corners so even when I do have time to clean, it's only been the bare minimum. And by that I mean just enough so that I don't go insane and so that my closest of friends and relatives can come over without me being completely humiliated.

But yesterday I vacuumed under AND behind furniture. I emptied ALL of the trash cans and recycling bins. I dusted everywhere - not just as high as I can see.

A couple of friends were coming over for dinner and were to arrive at 6:30.

At 6:20 my whole house was clean. Pictures hung, baseboards dusted, furniture de-furred and Febreezed. Lasagna in the oven. Dogs brushed and paws cleaned. Tree lights on. Ella Fitzgerald Christmas CD playing. I had even gone through all of my flatware and pulled out enough forks, knives and spoons for everyone that matched (matched, I tell you!) AND didn't have spots on them from the dishwasher.

At 6:25 I stopped to admire how, for the first time in a long time, my house seemed like a home instead of a shanty inhabited by a hobo.

At 6:26 I decided I would go ahead and make a little cocktail to enjoy while I waited on my guests and bask in this glorious moment of being a capable, competent grown-up.

At 6:27 there was a loud crash as three, five-foot-wide shelves in the mud room collapsed in an avalanche of paint cans and tools and dog treats and light bulbs and extension cords and citronella candles and garden clogs and rain boots and beach towels, gouging several holes in the wall and ripping off part of the molding around the door with them as they fell.

At 6:28 several words were uttered that were not in the holiday spirit.

At 6:29 I made sure that neither dog was trapped under the avalanche and was thankful they weren't in the mud room when it happened.

At 6:30 The dogs I was one minute ago thankful weren't harmed, were threatened as one of them dove head first into the pile of crap to dig out a bag of Greenies and the other started to drag a power drill out through the dog door.

At 6:31 my guests arrived. A dear and wonderful gay couple, who came through the door full of Christmas cheer and with festive food and gifts. They saw my predicament and declared: "If we were more butch we'd help you put all of that back up. Let's make martinis instead!"

At 6:51 my glass was refilled for the second of what would be several times that evening and I no longer cared how clean my house was, the disaster in the mud room, that one of the dogs helped herself to some of the appetizers or that the other tried to stick his nose in someones drink, or hell, even if my flatware matched.

That lasagna was damn good though.

What I Learned This Summer - Part Two

2. Always, always - ALWAYS - use test paint:

Every single frickin' room in my house is, or was, in the process of being painted. In two of them I first applied test paint and have ended up with exactly the color that had been floating about in my head.

You know, in my head, the place where I am Martha Stewart and my best friends are Tom Filicia and Nate Berkus. It's all kinds of fun in there...

But, in two of the other rooms I arrogantly taped a couple of paint chips to a wall, declared a winner without much thought and then painted. Only to be horrified at the end result.

In the bedrooms I wanted a nice, coffee-with-a-bit-of-cream colored brown. Not too dark. Not too light. A Goldilocks of brown, if you will. How hard could that be, right? Well, the boys that helped me paint started on one of the bedrooms while I was busy doing something else in another room and were being suspiciously quiet while they worked. After a bit they called me in to look at the color, sounding a bit concerned. And rightly so.

It was pink.

Well, eventually a mauve-ish tan. But all wet and shiny and freshly painted, it was pink. We tried to convince ourselves that it would dry darker and be fine. In reality, I think they knew I was going to hate it, but they were very sweet (and very tall - Summer Lesson Learned Part 2.5 is always get tall boys to help you paint...) and humored me and kept painting anyway. Two days later I went back to the paint store, they added green to the paint, matched it perfectly to the color in my head and I went home and sheepishly re-painted by myself.

Then the bathroom. Oh the bathroom. It needed a muted, robin's egg blue - one of those nice Martha Stewart vintagey shades of aqua. But again... I recklessly painted and then stepped back to take a look, promptly declaring "Aaaaaand now I live in a beach house!" Turquoise. Bright, blinding turquoise. Seriously. Like hang a shrimp net in the corner, find a parrot statue for the back of the toilet and a seashell cover for the box of Kleenex. Lord. Finally though I got it right and now every morning I sigh at how much I love it and how it's finally exactly the right color. Finally.

I bemoaned to Katie about all of this one afternoon and she said that for women, picking paint colors is akin to men's inability to stop and ask for directions. It's something that we believe we should be able to just inherently do without assistance and sometimes we just can't. So true.

It's almost all done now. Well, as done as it's going to get for now. And I will share photos soon.

Until then, in my head, it's happy hour and Tom and Nate and I are enjoying martinis and discussing what fabric to recover my living room chair in, if you'd like to join us.

See you tomorrow.