houston, we have a problem.

A few weeks ago I arrived home from work to find this:

Do you see the problem?  My neighbour painted her garage door.  And she painted it a different colour than mine.  As you can assume, with me being completely anal and all, having my garage door a different colour than my neighbour's really, really bothered me.  Let's look at it from a different angle:

I decided to sleep on it before overreacting.  I mean, it's only a garage door, right?

After sleeping on it, (and going outside to look at the doors again), I was still troubled.  I figured out that I had 5 possible options:

1. Leave my garage door as is and try to get used to the mismatched colours (unlikely).
2. Paint my neighbour's garage door back to white so it would match mine (preferable).
3. Paint both my neighbour's garage door and my garage door a completely different colour altogether (likely to cause problems and maybe she doesn't like bright purple as much as me).
4. Spray paint "YO WTF HOMEY?" on her garage door so that she would have to repaint it and ask her to paint mine while she's at it (Scott vetoed this).
5. Paint my garage door the same colour as my neighbour's garage door (the adult thing to do).

After much consideration, I decided that #5 was likely the option which would cause the least amount of conflict.  And, it's a nice colour that she picked, so you know, why go recreating the wheel?  I texted her to ask her if she had any paint left over.  Nada - but she would leave the empty can by my front door so I could go and buy the same colour (which I did).  I will point out that the fact that she only bought enough paint for her own garage door taught me something about my neighbour and that is that she would have been completely comfortable with our garage doors remaining mismatched forever more.  I'm not going to lie, I will never look at her the same way again.

The weather finally cooperated with me and this morning I painted my garage door, while Cam made chalk drawings on the driveway.  I feel much better now.  I hope if my neighbour decides to do anything drastic like, I don't know, repave her side of the driveway or something, she lets me know beforehand...and don't even get me started about Christmas lights.

Also, I think the neighbourhood dogs have been "helping" water my cedar globe bush and hostas.  Assholes.  Speaking of assholes, guess who didn't even notice that I painted the garage door?  Captain Oblivious, who drove up, walked inside, and only realized all the hard work I'd done when he read my blog.  Sheesh.

The Laundry, It Never Ends.

I didn't always hate doing laundry. I used to take quiet pride in sorting the colours, separating the delicates, pulling items out of the dryer while they were still hot and promptly folding them so that they wouldn't get wrinkled. I was very particular about how my laundry was folded and put away. I think that last part is what got me into my current predicament. You see, I am the only person in my house who does laundry, and it is largely my fault. I used to care about how it was done (stupid, stupid!!) and now that I don't care so much about the how and have more appreciation for plain ol' done, I wish that way back when, I would have been less picky and encouraged my dear husband to help out with laundry duty. Hindsight - why must you always be 20/20?

As you can see from the picture (taken this morning), I have relaxed my standards significantly regarding my preferred folding technique and I am encouraging the next generation of Carefoots to learn to love all things laundry. Max is very good at taking everything out of the basket, but is more focused on trying to put on my leopard print nursing bra than getting down to folding. Cameron seems to dig sucking on clean socks (they taste better than the dirty ones) but has yet to figure out how to match them up. Not to worry, I'll keep working on it.

I was discussing my laundry issue with a friend yesterday, telling him that I had been put in the no win situation of a) doing laundry or b) going commando, because I had let the mountain of dirty clothes grow so high that I was literally out of underwear. He told me that he actually likes doing laundry (and dishes...but that's a whole other blog post). My first thought was that he should get his ass over to my house and get to work, but then I realized that he really has no idea what he is talking about as his kids are no longer babies, and I am willing to bet that he has forgotten just how impossible it is to stay on top of the ever growing laundry heap that kids feed incessantly.

So, let this be a PSA to all the young women out there who are just starting to cohabitate. Get your partner helping with the laundry NOW. It doesn't matter if his or her folded towels look like crumpled newspapers, and the odd load of whites ending up slightly pink is not the end of the world. Trust me, you'll appreciate not having to deal with a mountain of laundry that could be mistaken for an amusement park ride in mommy blog hell.