O.M.G

Above, a sunny day rainbow we saw last week in Bay Ridge. Today, we had a sunny rainbow on our floor...

P loves getting stuff. Any stuff. I keep meaning to a post about hoarding/collecting.... The child brings home rocks, sticks and leaves, every time we leave the house. He'd happily get anything at any store. And if he sees something left on someone's stoop, he'd like to bring that home too. Ahh, but I"ll leave all of those details to a different post. This one is for a simple story. One that revolves around "Startling Orange."

So, we found a wooden dresser down the block yesterday. As soon as P saw it he said "I'd do teamwork to get this home, Mama." (Honestly, the kid doesn't care what it is, he wants to bring it home!) I just so happened to be in the market for a (free) dresser for P's clothes, so teamwork it was. But first we had to do some dealmaking. Because, the Little Man can get a wee bit dictatorial about how things will go down. (I once removed a tall bookshelf from our kitchen cabinet to clean and by the time I turned around to replace it, the child had determined it his and stocked it with toys. Its still in the playroom, displaying trucks and dinosaurs....New room and new purpose meant, to me, a new color, so I painted it one night. Whoops! The child still bemoans the change in color. Same with our trunk. Same with a wood box we have. Basically, re-painting is a problem:) However, this new dresser was recently unearthed from the corner church's basement (as displayed by the spider webs and that fine, musty smell) and featured a shit brown paint-job. But the wood was in great shape and the size was exactly what we needed. So I told him from the get-go that the paint would have to go. He was hot to trot to obtain the piece and agreed instantly. As soon as it landed inside our landing, the child wondered if we couldn't leave just a part, a small part, of the brown? Just to remember it by? Oy ;)

After going through paint splotches galore, the obvious answers for the room were green or black. I like simplicity in my space and would be fine with everything being white with a pop of green. Having a child necessitates less white, more black. Fine. But the LIttle Man likes bright. He wears red shoes, red sunglasses, tartan pants and has quite the fetish for hot pink (duh, BB is half hot pink, after all:) The child suggested hot pink. I thought of Ethan :) I countered with black. He countered with hot pink. I countered with green. He countered with vibrant orange. Fine.

And so we come to today's story. The one where we take 2 hours to make it home from the hardware store (ten blocks can take a lifetime when one of you is supposed to be a dog, a dog that enjoys looking at every leaf and twig he passes). This lateness means immediate dinner preparations upon arrival. Which means the can of Startling Orange is forgotten in the canvas bag by the door...

You can see where this is going. The child innocently yanked on the bag to claim his charcoal collection (that he scored from the fireplace at the historic house in the park today) so he could draw while I cooked. All of a sudden I heard a crestfallen "Mama?"

When I turned towards the playroom, there stood an enormous puddle of Startling Orange. And the child. Who was quite pale by comparison. Needless to say I was pretty shocked myself, and out popped the words "No. You. Di'int" It was comical, but the child didn't quite get the joke, and, perched on the trunk by the puddle, covered his eyes in horror. It was adorable.

These are the moments I wish I had a Mama Manual. How the holy hell do you get a puddle of paint off of carpet? P was mortified, his hoarding instincts went full throttle and he was obsessed with knowing if we could ever get those same carpet squares again. As I scooped the paint up with my hands (yah, I'm sure there are better ways to improvise this situation, but they were what I had available:) the child tried really hard to not fall apart. And I was struck by the irony. He had just dumped (accidentally, of course, but the heavy handed yanking had certainly precipitated the situation) a can of shockingly bright orange paint onto my carpet, my dinner was boiling over, my hands were phosphorescent, my canvas bag ruined... and he needed the hand holding. At that moment, I felt like a mother. A real one. Typically, I feel like some kid (the kind with grey hairs and crickety knees) that is faking it till I make it. I was moving fast but feeling mellow and the hilarity of the situation was as obvious as the orange. It hit me. Perspective. I finally own a piece of that pie. (I wish it were a more permanent parcel though, I think its just a time-share at this point...) So I clucked sweet reassurances to the worried wee one as I pushed paint back into the pail. My calm slowly slowed his worries, and he switched to Mr. Helpful.

And here is where I plug our rug. If you are shopping for a floor covering, you must buy Flor. I purchased this rug specifically for days like today. Bowls of soup, sunscreen, cat vomit (sorry), you name it, the Flor has taken it. And scoffed. Today, we added bright orange paint to that list. The painted carpet tiles went to the bathtub where.... they are now drying, paint free. The Little Man echoed my thoughts exactly as the first tile came clean. "I didn't expect that to go so well, Mama."

When E walked in the door and noticed the gaping holes in our rug, I rushed to tell him of our adventure. I freakin' love my husband. As I announced that they were drying in the bath, due to their previous bath of bright orange paint, he never asked how such a thing could have happened (I guess anyone with a five year old wouldn't really need to ask that question.) Instead, he asked, "Orange? Why orange?"

Which is exactly what I thought when I just laid down the first layer of Startling Orange over the Shit Brown. The combo, after just one coat, was Shockingly Shitty. Hopefully I scooped enough off of the floor to reach the child's required level of neon.... And with that, I'm off to do coat number two (except for that one spot - that will remain forever brown, for happy, hoard-like remembrances :)