101 uses for a garden hose

Hi all-

Where to start? Hmm...camera is downstairs, I'll get some more pics of baby Luke up tonight. We are totally enamored with him....he's a wonderful addition to our family and I want to brag.

But first, I want to share something else with you. Until today, Mike and I have been working toward the goal of getting our house on the market for viewing next week. That means it needs to be 1. Uncluttered, and 2. Pretty. Both of which it is most certainly not. ONe of the things we need to do to make it pretty is to "touch-up" paint the front. We had saved some paint from when we painted the thing five years ago...in the garage. Apparently, latex paint doesn't tolerate freezing very well...and it turned into a nice sedimentary rock in the bottom of the bucket. So, Mike went off to the paint store and bought some in a "matching color" (ie. the code on the bucket matched.) Unfortunately, when he painted over the spots, the color was obviously different than the original.

So, it was another trip to the paint store. Mike loaded up the van with the paint to be returned. Since I haven't slept much in the last week, I was thrilled that I finally got to lie down for a nap at around 3:30. I had to make the most of my time: Luke was down for a nap after nursing for 90 minutes straight. I left the breakfast dishes undone and raced upstairs. I was just getting comfortable when someone lifted the pillow off of my head and woke me up. Husband looked terrified and flabbergasted and baffled at the same time. Uh-oh.

"Woman, can you come downstairs??? I need your help."

"What did you do, honey?"

"Um,.....I spilled some paint in the car."

"Well, get a rag and a squirt bottle."

"Um....I need you to come. I um,....I spilled a GALLON of paint in the car. How do I clean it out?"

.....

that was the end of my nap.

I spent the next two hours of the afternoon with the garden hose in hand, spraying gallons and gallons of water into our minivan. After the initial shock, awe, and horror subsided, I realized the potential joy of my new project. It was actually very, very fun. Especially since Mike is the kind of person who gets irritated when he sees a dog hair in the car or catches me feeding chicken nuggets to the kids while they're in their carseats. The irony of the whole thing is quite amusing. I stood there blasting the inside of the car with the hose on as high as it would go. And paint was splattered everywhere...and there were painty rivers flowing down the carpet and round the plastic doorway cover things....and down into the crevices..... Eventually the rivers joined together in a huge painty lake next to the sliding door that overflowed into the alley below. After a couple of hours, the rivers went from khaki-colored to clear, and the van looked like it had simply gone through the car wash with all of the windows open.

Mike, I hope you forgot to read this post. And I am happy to announce that your van, albeit a bit saturated at present, is cleaner than it has ever been. Good thing the exterior of our house is a similar color as the interior of our minivan. !!