I'm soooo frustrated.

Spent all day painting Emily's room (or, rather, her old room!) using the paint we bought 6 years ago. A lovely shade of green even though it's a bit mintier than I recalled. (Dean said it was the shade used in 1940's hospitals and I was thinking 1950 dental offices...)

I even took it to the paint store where I bought it and had them shake it up again.

Looked great until I just looked at it a minute ago. With the overhead light/fan it looks fine, but when you turn that off and turn on a lamp on a side table, all these hairy little bumpy things show up ALL OVER the wall. Everywhere.

Best I can figure it was a perfect storm; old paint, too fluffy of roller perhaps, and having both the window a/c on high and the overhead fan on. I had vacuumed the baseboards and edges of the room, but maybe the walls were dusty, or what I missed on the floor got blown up on the paint and incorporated with the second coat. Who knows. All I know is that tomorrow I will have to use a straight edge and scrap all the walls, vacuum them AND the floor, go buy new paint, and paint the room all over again.

Maybe someone out there knew I really would have rather had the walls a more yellow-green than minty. Like Laura Ashley's Apple I at Lowe's.

So, it turns out that even though I'm frustrated, I'm grateful.

And besides...I'm retired! I have time to paint and repaint and repaint again if I want to!

But hopefully once more will do the trick. And Apple I should look just right...

So...

I'm sitting here in my garden, surrounded by pink roses and lush green trees. My lavender has begun to bloom and I can just catch a faint whiff of what is to come. Is there anyone who can't be charmed by the scent of fresh lavender?

A bright pink tablecoth is on the round table and I'm shaded by the lime green and white umbrella (complete with tassels!) I bought on sale at Pier 1 several years ago. I'm listening to the water dropping from Pan's pipes into a shell-shaped basin and I can hear all sorts of birds who seem as happy as I to be enjoying this morning, this garden...this Eden. My coffee tastes especially good.

It's lovely to know I have nowhere to go, no one to see, nothing pressing to do. So very easy to stay in the moment in a place and time like this!

I think I'll just sit here a while and take it all in...

Hope you have a wonderfully peaceful morning, too!

Observation on the second day of not sitting behind a desk:

Not working is a lot of work!

:-)

Karen Anne does the happy dance!