One More Day

They really trick you with those three day weekends, don't they?  Every Sunday I find myself saying: if I only had one more day...  And then I get one more day, and decide it would be a perfect weekend to finally paint the hallway.  We bought three samples back in May, slapped them on the wall, gave ourselves a week to choose, and even planned the weekend to make it easy.  I would take the toddler to my Mom's house; she was overdue for a visit anyway, and my husband would take a day to paint the hallway in peace, without battling a small boy for dominance of the whole middle of the house (the hallway in question separates the living room, where we do most of our living, from the kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms, where we do need to go on a fairly regular basis).

Then we didn't like any of the samples, so we skipped the painting that weekend.  We uploaded photos of the hallway into paint-store websites and compared shades.  Found a few we loved, and bought more samples.  Our hallway began to resemble a poorly made quilt, while the shades on the wall bore scant resemblance to the online photos.  Summer came, and if you read anything I wrote here all summer long, you know we were far too busy doing nothing to accomplish a single damn thing, and so we drifted through our patchwork existence with only the vaguest plans to eventually finish the hallway.

In the end, we settled on one of the original colors.  We could have finished the room in May!  But then where would that leave October, bereft of any extra work on its one and only three day weekend?  So in these three days the hallway was painted, and an endless amount of laundry was done (but not folded or put away.  It's still in baskets on the desk in the dining room if you're interested.  I'll love you forever.), and ditto for the neverending pile of dirty dishes (done, but left to dry piled on the kitchen countertop), but somehow on Monday night, I still found myself saying: if I only had one more day...

That extra day is an illusion, isn't it?  It's just an idea.  The Day Where Everything Gets Done.  You can't find it on a calendar anymore than you can find NeverNeverLand on a map, or the Fountain of Youth in Florida.  But I've always believed that some magic is real.  For example, it now appears predestined that my hallway was not painted until October.  And if you're feeling anything like Linus this Halloween, come on over.

This just might be the year the Great Pumpkin finally makes an appearance.  We've got the space all decked out in it's finest October glory!  This room might not have impressed me as much in May, but as the weather gets cooler outside and we prepare to hibernate indoors for many long months, I love that we went bold, and warm, and a little wilder than we usually do, with our safe greys and pale beiges.  Here is our finally finished hallway:

Now if only I had one more day, I could fold and put away all that laundry...