Air Soft Pellets and Darkly Painted Rooms

The Snoqualmie Valley this morning.
Just above the row of poplar trees in the lower portion of this photo is the Tall Chief golf course. Above the course are rows and rows of rolling hills and then, Mt Si.









The photo below shows a beautiful afternoon today!

This is my 'words of wisdom' day. I don't have these types of days too often, mostly because I don't consider myself to be a true expert in most things...and while I do have my own opinions about things, when certain children related issues arise, I tend to look at them with a 'pick your battles' attitude .

So, this wisdom all comes about because I have spent the last 4 days cleaning and painting both KD and Ian's bedrooms.

In middle school, both kids wanted to paint their bedrooms.

I had no problems with this, it isn't a battle to pick, it's a sign of independence and creativity.

KD picked my suggestions, a nice soft yellow and blue, and did nothing more dangerous to her walls than try out different lipsticks on them and then write the phone numbers and emails of all her friends everywhere.

So, now, with everything out of her room, whoosh, one coat of paint! I'm done.....

Now, my words of wisdom come as a result of letting Ian pretty much control the choices in his room. I even recall that he paid for his own paint.

Words of Wisdom #One:

Try very hard to not let your child paint his or her bedroom a very dark color.

Try not to let them know that there is a projector and lots of acrylic paint in the garage loft.

Now I have already mentioned the guns n' roses incident. Ian did a very artistic paint job, and he went on to do a huge BLACK panda and an Enjoi skating emblem. Then, he painted the Ali saying, float like a butterfly, sting....you know the rest... on the ceiling and added a skateboard emblem. It really was great!

Then he painted a skateboard emblem in red on his door (this is when the Starbucks Christmas party upstairs fell apart). He painted all of this over a very dark blue background...

Now I have just spent 4 days trying to paint over it!!

Back then I never thought about it, but maybe I never thought much about moving.

Now, I said, why not just sell the house with the bedroom as it is.....some teenager would fall in love with it...but, Bill never truly appreciates my moments of problem solving, he went and bought more paint for me.

This will be day 5 and I almost have it all covered up....

Words of Wisdom #TWO

If your teenage son has an air soft gun, do NOT let him use it in the house.

Especially, do not let him take a huge piece of styrofoam into his bedroom where he will use it as a target....

One day while working at Starbucks, a kid I knew came in and mentioned what a fun time he had over at our house last week. I know this kid, but I couldn't remember that he was at the house last week. Then, when I recalled that Bill and I were not at the house last week (we had gone to Denver), I began my investigation. What I discovered was there had been an airsoft war at our house, in the dark, on all 3 floors of the house.

Then I began to find the pellets. I saw a few blue ones lying around, but once I put on my glasses, I found hundreds and hundreds of little pellets. Over a period of time, Ian picked up most of them.

But I did not think about his room, where I had spent very little time after he left for school.

So far, I have filled an empty gallon paint container with brown, green, blue and white air soft pellets. They are embedded in the carpet after being walked on by many big boys.

And if you have ever tried to vacuum up air soft pellets, you know that it can't be done. The vacuum sucks them in and spits them back out on the other side of the room. However, I suggest doing this because then they are all at least in the same area, on the same side of the room and easier to pick up.

So, while Bill continues to install the new bathroom downstairs, I will keep painting until the last color of old bedroom paint is nothing but a memory.......and I like to think that 50 years from now, if this house is still around, somewhere, a child will find the last little tiny air soft pellet and ask his mom, what's this?........