The Hap-Happiest Color of All!!!

It's red. Just so you know. It's been scientifically proven today. But more on that in a minute.

At church last night I MADE myself say out loud that we would have a Band Meeting on Friday because I’m such a slacker at PLANNING those things and I’ve let too many months slip by with no meeting at all. I have to make myself say it out loud, then I’m obligated to follow through and DO it. Things were so much easier when Band Meeting was a SCHEDULED service along with all of the other auxiliary services! It was automatically on the calendar: one week would say CPMA, one VLB, one WMB, and one ABM—each and every month. For that service the bands (assuming the church was large enough to have more than one band!) would split up and have their Band Meeting in different locations on that particular night—regular service night. It was just part of the schedule, you knew it was coming and planned for it. When I’m in charge of setting up my OWN Band Meetings?! It’s way too easy to procrastinate right through the month and out the other end. But not THIS month—not now that I’ve announced it. Ha! And God is so good. I was praying about it last night and felt like He laid some things on my heart and gave me some direction. ~whew~ And I’m SO excited because this will be our first band meeting at a HOUSE instead of the church. Better yet—MY house! :-) My band consists of the young people and they all still live at home (except for the world traveler who lives in Guyana and is preparing to move to Tokyo—crazy, hu?!), so that means I can have it at my home EVERY month now that the house is finished enough. Oh, happy day. :-) Though I won’t have time to make a bunch of goodies because…

PAINT! What else?! ;-) I’ve been painting, priming and painting some more. Which brings us to the title of this post. It's red. If you've ever wondered what the happiest color is, it's RED. Hands down. That's right, today we painted...

KATIE’S RED WALL!!!! I LO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-OVE it!!! Oh, it just makes me so, so, so happy! I sometimes think that blue is my favorite color. I always like blue. Deep, dark, dramatic, country, primitive blue. It’s just so pretty and I love it. But when we started slapping the red paint on the wall today there is a whole other emotion that seems to overtake me. (I know, I know—EMOTIONAL again. Jerk. Ha!) It just makes me soooooooo happy!!! Katie and I just squealed about it the whole time we were working—it was a completely involuntary reaction, just the natural result of the happy, brilliant, bright, cheery red wall. Kate did all of the roller work and I brushed the edges. I’ve been sooooo scared we’d gotten the wrong red (don’t we always?) but it’s going to be PERFECT. And for clarification… I know I use the word “red” very loosely, like every time I refer to the color of my dining room walls and kitchen cabinets. I say “red” because it is in the red family and it just comes out that way, but that color in those places is actually a deep burgundy. What we did today—the color that is squeal inducing—is RED. Real, true-blue (ha—nothing blue about it) Coca-Cola RED. :-) Actually it is “Cranberry Zing.” Even the NAME sounds happy. ZING! It makes you smile, doesn’t it?! But for our purposes it is “Coca-Cola Red.” That makes me smile, too. Not CRY. Smile. Jerk. ;-)




Anyway, red is not the only accomplishment of the day, just the happiest. :-) Today I got two coats of blue on the guest room walls. After inspection, I’m calling them FINISHED!!! Wa-Hoo!!! Then Katie helped me with the one red wall in her room. While that was drying, she helped me put the first coat of brown on all of the upper walls in Joe’s room. It will need more, but we’ll have to buy more paint before we can continue. It feels good that we were able to complete the first full coat anyway. After that we went back and put the second coat on the happy, happy red wall. It would be a miracle if that’s all it took (red almost ALWAYS takes three full coats, sometimes four), but I’m hopeful—it’s actually looking pretty good. I feel GREAT about how much we got done today. What a great help Katie was! I have loved having some time with just her this week and have really enjoyed her company—and her help, of course! She’s turning into a pretty neat young lady. She’s getting old enough that she’s not JUST my daughter anymore; she’s also turning into my friend. I love that. :-)

I did talk to the guys today. James called from the Amish store to see what spices I needed. It was GREAT having him tell me everything that they had available while I could look in the cabinet and check for what I needed. It’s soooooo much cheaper to buy spices there than at a grocery store and you get lots more. Joe and Sam are having quite the adventure, it seems. They shot a groundhog the first day (“I think it was rabid, Mom, because it started chasing Sam!”), Sam found a fast turtle today (“I raced him… he won”), Joe caught 12 fish, and they both went in search of a snake down at the creek—and found one eating a 6” fish, or so they say. They shot and wounded the snake and watched it float down the creek. This morning they went to see Aunt Betty and play with her new yorki-poo puppy who fell in love with Sam and followed him all over the yard. I’m so glad they’re having such a great time!

It's been a good week for everybody around here. Much, much better than last week. And so much less emotional. ~whew~ (Jerk...) ;-)