Time Out

That's me, sending myself to time out.

A lesson for everyone today: priorities.

Priorities, because 24 hours before hosting book club in your living room, eschewing preparations for door painting is a little silly. Especially when nothing goes right. Especially when you decide the wall color really DOES need to be changed as soon as possible afterward because it does, indeed, look quite bad with the new door color. And even though you expected those two colors to look a bit vomity together, you went ahead and painted the door anyway... the day before a dozen women were to sit mere feet from its stankiness. And then because it looked so bad, you had to paint a more neutral sample of paint around the door frame to remind yourself of how much better it will look once the new wall color goes up.

So now tonight, when a dozen women sit mere feet from your hideous color combination which includes a stripe of beige that you're hoping will convey your future plan for the space to your guests, and they're eating tubes of Ritz crackers and yogurt cups because you didn't actually prepare for them, you can rest easy knowing that at least your door (just the door - not the wall around it) looks nice.

Except... there's a small problem with the doorknob. You see, you broke the ancient old one when you removed it to paint. So you bought a new knob/deadbolt set and figured installation would be a breeze.

But after you return from taking it back to the store because you accidentally got it keyed to your sister's house key instead of your own (don't ask), you realize that the latch assembly for the knob doesn't fit because there's no recessed area for the plate to sit in on the side of the door. So you have to pull out your trusty chisel, which you've never actually used before, and start getting handy in between distressed calls to your husband's cell phone (which are never answered, because apparently some people are busy working at 10 in the morning).

(I even misspelled ugliest! Vom!)

Oh, and the old hole for the new deadbolt isn't standard sized so you're going to have to fix that, but you can't find the big scary saw drill bit thing you need anywhere. So you stuffed a rag into the hole to keep cold air from flooding in.

45 minutes, 1 can of Diet Dr. Pepper, and 175 naughty words later, this is what you have to show for your work:

It's time to pick that mess up and start prettying up my tubes of Ritz for tonight's book club.

Curse you, DIY addiction and lack of common sense! Curse you.


(Second lesson: patience. 'Cause I still need to write the fall nesting post for today. Oops.)