The Goodbye Girl

This morning I waved Colby off for the third time this month.  It never gets any easier, you know?

On the up side, it's all of these trips that give us the ability to buy new furniture and plan fun trips, even without a solid income on my part (I'm still using my unemployment check each week to pay off the balance I racked up on my credit card during the months that I had no income at all... ugh...), but as I've told him many times, I would happily trade our bedside tables to have him home again.

Sometimes it feels as though things haven't changed all that much since the days of our long distance relationship, and it gets a bit daunting to think about how I'll be able to adapt to this practice of saying goodbye over and over again for at least the next 8 years.  But then I look around at the home we're making together, and I think about how very proud I am of him for doing what he does every day, and I remember how very worth it this all is.  The tax free paychecks don't hurt either.

And it helps when a bouquet of beautiful irises arrive on the doorstep.

It was great to have him home for a day, and we made tons of progress organizing the garage yesterday.  I should have taken some before pictures to fully illustrate how terrifying it was out there.  We're using the garage to store all of the furniture and boxes upon boxes of items we plan on donating to Airman's Attic, the base thrift store.  It's absolutely amazing how many things it's possible to accumulate in a lifetime, and as a recovering packrat, I've managed to say goodbye to quite a few things that I just don't use anymore, or have completely forgotten I even owned.  I'm still working on curing Colby of his packrat ways, but I'm confident that he'll get there eventually. 

We're also having trouble figuring out exactly what it is we need to do to have our garbage picked up each week.  It seems that the garbagemen flip a coin each Tuesday to determine whether or not they'll dispose of our garbage that day.  It's always a gamble that we'll have an empty trash can at the end of the week, and for the past couple of weeks, we've lost that bet.  So, now we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 very large bags of garbage as well as a full trashcan that we'll probably have to bring to the dump along with my old ratty couch!  There's also piles of broken down cardboard from our moving boxes as well as all of the standard "garage stuff", but we've at least mananged to organize it all into piles that we'll hopefully be able to tackle when Colby returns and maybe someday we'll even be able to get one of the cars in there!  I'm really aiming for the stars there.

And finally, I've undertaken the difficult task of trying to find the perfect yellow for our living room/kitchen area.  The best descriptive term I can think of for what I'm looking for is "Tuscan Yellow", but so far both colors we've tested, after sifting through tons of paint chips, have dried to a much sunnier yellow than I want.  I want the room to be bright and airy, but I don't want to feel as though we've been swallowed by Big Bird--I want "muted, bright, and airy", if that makes even a lick of sense.  Anyway, I predict another trip to Lowe's in my near future for some intimate time alone with the paint chip walls.  We've had some great times together in the past, I just know it won't fail me in the end.  Right, paint chip wall?

Comments

[Lynn]

Canary Yellow. Or candlelight. If those colors exist in paint, they may be what you're looking for :-)

[Mandy]

LOL, my living room is "golden pineapple," which really is more of a mustard... liked it well enough when I moved in, but now I can't stand it. The problem is that the color is so dark so rather than prime, I thought maybe I should try a faux finish over the "golden pineapple." I've spent so many hours staring at stinking paint chips, it's saaaaad!!! Nothing goes with this color!!! NOTHING!!!!

But there's this faux venetian plaster mix called "Limone" which I might try... it's kind of a parchment color, but not so brown.

[OldWarrior]

A popular Air Force young family interior color back in my day was "Baby Snot Yellow." It is very subdued with a complex palette of yellow hues, but that may be hard to find at Lowes. A popular exterior trim was "Baby Poop Green."
I don't think either had "Tuscan" as a descriptor, however.

[Kate]

Hm. Yeah. I'm no help on the colors. I was distracted by the bouquet of flowers somewhere up top...(it was right after the tax free paychecks).

[anne]

I LOVE picking out paint. I'm usually pretty good at it if you need help! ;)

As far as the garbage goes, if they skip you, call the garbage company. They have to come and pick it up if you call them and tell them it's not getting picked up. Especially if you are paying for it. Seattle Public Utilities is our garbage and water service - not sure what yours would be. They should also provide you with a garbage can and probably recycling bin too if that area is into it.

As far the Tuscan yellow goes, you might have to buy a yellow and then sponge a darker color onto it to get what you are looking for... :)

anne

[RisibleGirl]

A beat me to it on both counts:

1. Call the garbage
2. Sponge a darker color to make it tuscan yellow. I want to do that to our family room eventually and that's what I had in mind.

[RisibleGirl]

I meant call the garbage company.

The garbage doesn't generally pick up their phone. At least mine doesn't. heeeeeeee!