The Great Paint and Picture Adventure

After three trips to Lowe's, three different shades of paint, and numerous headaches from the fumes I've finally finished painting the living room.

The first color was too light, the second color too greyish, and the third color just right (but only after much reassurance on my part to Dad). This room is constantly bathed in sunlight and we finally had to go for a color much darker than we would normally pick. It looks great though and the room is no longer this horrible mauve color but "holmes cream" (which is creamy looking but the rest is hard to describe).

So the rest of my day has been spent helping Mom make personalized calendars for both of my grandmas. I did this very same gift Christmas '03 and my family loved it. Dad got quiet and Cheryl and Mom teared up. It took me a while to do though, since I made each month a collage of photos instead of just one or two. Mom is going for the two-a-month job and let me tell you how trippy it is looking through old family photos.

First of all, I'm beginning to realize how absolutely gorgeous my mother was when she was my age. And weirdly enough my father was quite a looker himself. The photos of them in college are the ones that are most striking. Most of the photos of Mom with her college friends laughing and joking around, but I swear that when I look at them I see me with my friends instead. After looking at these I like to think I would have been friends with my Mom, had we been in college at the same time.

But the one that's the most interesting to me is with my parents in the classic "college-esque" pose. My Dad is holding the camera in one hand, his other arm around my Mom and both of them are leaning towards each other and smiling. How many times have I seen people do that at parties and downtown? More than I care to count. But here is my parents, thirty years ago, doing the exact same thing. It's mind boggling, really. I'm learning about these lives they lived before I came into the picture and it's fasinating.



Edit: I just found out that the above-mentioned photo was right after Dad proposed to Mom. "He wanted to remember it forever," she said, "No one else was there to take it." Wow.