History Lesson

Here is an installment in the history of Chrystalee.

This takes place in the most recent history …

Long, long ago, … ok, maybe not so long ago … in a kingdom filled with peace and happiness … ok, maybe in a tiny town filled with cowboys and transplants … there lived a beautiful queen … ok, maybe just a mother.

Now this mother was filled with all sorts of grand ideas. They rolled around in her head nearly all the time and on occasion, she would try to implement one.

She had recently settled on a color for her humble castle after trying out 7 or 8 different colors over the course of 5 years. It turned out, the shade didn’t matter so much as the gloss content. But regardless, she’d finally found the perfect combination; paper sack in semi-gloss. It was a color that surrounded this mother with warmth like a hug from your favorite grandmother on a crisp autumn day. It brought to mind walks in a tree lined lane as the leaves are changing color, cinnamon toast on a Sunday morning and quiet evenings reading by the glow of lamplight.

This mother loved this color like no other she had tried over the years. She’d worked hard to get it perfect. She’d essentially painted the entire public portion of the castle those 7 or 8 different times over the years and she was paint pooped! But the benefits of this perfect color were more than worth the effort.

Now, as this story is about a mother, let me tell you, it didn’t get painted overnight. No indeed, for the king … I mean husband … had told her MANY years previous that he liked white walls and was therefore unwilling to participate in any painting. (Just as a side note, the king … I mean husband … had also made it clear that as far as Christmas lights were concerned, the mother would need to take care of any that went up. The mother has given many a neighbor a gasp during the late fall months as she traverses the roof to set up the festive little twinkle lights.)

No, this mother is quite busy; so the painting was done in sections over some time. The kitchen was first, but with that completed and finely (not finally … finely) decorated with money earned watching another’s little ones, it pleased the mother to an extreme. Even when the mother could not find that perfect counter print to balance out the architectural print above the large bank of cabinets, it did not discourage her. She just decided to draw her own and no one has been the wiser. Oh the joy that those cream and black accents brought to the mother were heartwarming! So heartwarming, that she knew she was on the path of perfection.

After the kitchen came the entryway and extensive hall and nook area. These area’s were much easier as there were not so many trims and appliances to be careful of, but the ceilings were very tall so it took many hours as she would paint one small section of upper wall then climb down off the ladder, move it over a couple of feet, climb back up and start all over again. Well, it took some time to recover from these two painting expeditions and the mother had a color in the family room and dining room that she also liked; Chai Spice (a warm pumpkin color). But after many months of living with the rooms this way, the mother decided that the family room needed to be the same color as the kitchen and hallways to bring a sense of continuity to the castle. (She liked the Chai Spice enough to want to keep it in the dining room as a pop of color against the Paper Sack.)

So after working MANY hours with two young men in the field, when they offered to help with the painting of the family room, she took them up on it. They were only able to spare an hour as their work is an important one and the mother could not bear to take them from it for too long, but it was enough to get a first coat on all of the lower walls in the family room. The mother completed the room that day, knowing that if she procrastinated, it would be months before she was able to complete the project. (The mother suffers from motherhood; which means that the distractions are plentiful and the needs of others are always constant so her desires are sometimes compromised for others.)

Oh, her joy was overwhelming! The castle glowed with the color and she could be found sitting after all the little princes’ and princess … I mean sons and daughter … were in bed and the lamp glow on the walls fulfilled all her warm hug desires! The wrapped up in a cozy blanket at a glowing hearth feeling was supreme happiness!

But her joy was a greedy joy. It wanted more, which leads us to the most recent history lesson.

She had decided to take the color into her bedroom also. But motherhood got in the way just after she had reached the halfway mark. (See definition of motherhood above.) And so the room sat 60% completed for a long while. But once again, those two young men rode in to save the day. (The mother is getting older by this point and is not as spry as she once was so things just take longer now.) The mother was so happy for her knights in shining armor that she gave them the task of finishing the two partial walls in the bedroom and she began in on the master bath. Those two knights did indeed finish those two walls and after only one interruption of motherhood, the master bath was completed a week later. (A family reunion, which the mother hadn’t decided to go to until two hours before getting into the carriage for the land of Colorado, put a weeks distance between the first coat in the bathroom and the second coat in the bathroom.)

This is where the moral of the story comes in …

The mother, filled with her greedy joy, was too impatient to take care of her painting tools right away and so they sat there, in the bedroom (out of the way) for a week. It wasn’t until the most recent history that she decided to move on to another of her grand ideas that the sorrowful end of this story came about.

As the mother was organizing and cleaning the bedroom, she bent over to pick up the bucket of paint and move it out of the way so that she could move the huge mirror to another wall. …

(Badness is coming. Are you ready? You should be preparing yourself for the pure horror that is about to transpire!)

Yes, you guessed it! The bucket had been tipped upside down without the mother’s knowledge and in her eagerness with the new project, she pulled up with more force than the poor bucket could withstand and it left its lid on the floor as the mother pulled the rest up.

Paint was here, paint was there, paint was everywhere! The mother was horrified and the king … I mean husband … came running at her wails of pure misery and dismay. (To give the king … I mean husband … credit, he didn’t berate the mother for her tragic mistake. He probably thought that the mother was doing a good enough job of this on her own.)

The mother was so distraught cleaning up as much paint as possible, that when she in her frustration decided to throw not only the spilled paint but also the can, roller, ladle she had been using to scoop up the paint with and the paint pan in the garbage, she inadvertently tossed them into the recycling bin before realizing her mistake. She then had to take everything out of the recycling bin, wash it out of paint and re-bag everything to place in the ever so not environmentally friendly regular garbage bin.

All of this took place as internal tears streamed down and the race against the clock before the two young knights (one is different now) came by for another discussion.

Oh how the mighty fall
when consumed with greedy delight!
(Just in case you didn’t catch it … this is the moral!)

This is surly a true story that took place in the MOST recent history of the life of Chrystalee Thompson. (No names have been changed, because let’s face it, who else could this have happened too?)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode.

PS – The paint stain is disheartening, and we will be living with it for a while. But maybe in time, I’ll find an arrangement of furniture that will hide it from the eyes that know not where to look. : )