Well it looks like the home site in TN has been plotted, cleared and ready for take off. The weather just needs to hold in order to get the gears turning and the wheels spinning. We have the utmost confidence in our builder so we'll just leave the experts to that house. But this house we're in now is a whole 'nother story. It's time to fix this place up and make it seem like a nice place to live.Now there's not a whole lot of fixing to do really. Just some basics and clearing clutter out of the way. Maybe a few concrete cracks filled and weeds pulled. It's not like one can just sit back and enjoy the view when raising 5 kids who happen to live in, use and invite the neighborhood friends over to the place to enjoy. So we have had our share of fix ups to do along the way. They say that paint is the fastest, easiest and cheapest way to spruce up a room. But I wonder if "they" have ever painted with a 2 year old?
It's been a little while since I have been silly enough to have a paint can and a 2 year old in the house at the same time. The last time I attempted that I made sure that I had an iron clad plan. In fact, the plan was I would paint at night while the kids all slept. The first hurdle was getting the kids to go to bed and I stay awake. Then at around midnight, I would sneak downstairs and start painting. I would paint for a bit, seal up the cans, rinse out the paint brushes and hide them all under the drop cloth. The kids would never even know I was painting. I was so proud to be outsmarting the toddlers; it was brilliant!! But after only 2 nights of secret painting, the paint cans and paint brushes were discovered by the 2 yo who turned out to be quite brilliant too.
It happened in the raw light of the noonday sun. I had been upstairs folding laundry and humming the whistle while you work tune and feeling pretty proud of myself and of my stealthy painting plan. Heading downstairs to do more laundry, it didn't take me more than 4 steps to figure out my plan had within 5 minutes become a failure. How a child could so silently and quietly paint a hallway floor and wall in those minutes is beyond my comprehension, yet there I was as a witness that it had indeed happened. I can't in all honesty say that I handled the situation with cheerful grace; after all, I had planned on the paint only coming out at night during the hours of midnight and 4:00 am. My eyes seeing wet paint during the light of day just didn't sit well with me at that moment, yet I was too tired to have any energy left over to deal with the toddler after I was done with the paint. This pretty much saved the life of my toddler so I can say that yes God works in mysterious ways!
Undaunted I decided to press on and continue my painting journey and finish the living room. This time I would be more careful and not keep any open paint cans in the house at all. This seemed to be a little more work and somewhat humbling, but it was easier than cleaning paint off the hallway floor. The next day I of course need to buy more paint. I still planned on painting the living room that night, so I put the 3 gallons of unopened freshly custom mixed paint cans on the coffee table. The kids look at them a little quizzickly, but seeing how the cans were unopened and every screwdriver in the house has been lost anyhow, I wasn't much worried about it all. Later I decide that maybe I should get a quick nap in before I need to start on the late shift with the living room wall. It wasn't long before I hear one of the kids calling to get a towel. I didn't want to even think it! But in my groggy haze I stumble downstairs to see a white towel soaking up toasted toffee paint on the living room carpet. Apparently a can of paint somehow became liberated off the coffee table and ended up upside down with a popped off lid. Mysteriously all the kids had run off to the safety of the neighbor's house. Proving once again that God is still in the miracle business.
