The Colors Don't Match

I have never had any trouble distinguishing color. No matter how many times Elaine told me, "Your shirt doesn't match your pants.", I just knew I had chosen the correct color combination.

The fact that not one of you ever told me, "Hey Monner, your shirt doesn't watch your pants". That was only Elaine, so I figured, "How right can she be?"

I have had literally hundreds of compliments regarding my color selection of "Dyed by Darrell" yarns. Now that I think about it, Elaine is the only one to express displeasure with my color choices. "You need more earthtones." "Can't you dye jeweltones." "You are dyeing too much orange." I'll tell you folks, it's not easy being me when someone is always trying to hold you back.

Evidently my color choices don't work in the construction world.

I was chatting with the office manager from my construction world. She mentioned we needed to pick the paint scheme for a house we were building. (I'm taking a big chance here, folks. She reads this crap (as well as her daughter) and she has warned me she had better not read about herself in Monner's Mumblings. Well, she's not the villain in this story, (there is one) so I'm going to take a chance.

We are in a neighborhood controlled by a Home Owners Association. This particular home owners association (HOA) keeps the neighborhood residents from building fences that are actually functional, collects fees, prohibits keeping campers in driveways, tell residents to mow their lawn and control the exterior paint colors of the houses. (If that sounded a little negative, please remember, Monner lives on forty acres in the mountains. "He doesn't "need no stinkin' HOA!")

Elaine's going tell me, "That is poorly written. Your grammar is terrible." I'll have to tell her, "I know, I want it that way." She's always trying to get me to conform. Forty years folks, she's been trying for forty years. (I'm drifting.)

Anyway, the HOA has provided our construction company a binder of PRE-APPROVED exterior paint schemes. The binder has about twenty paint schemes to choose from. Each paint scheme designated a main color, trim color and accent color. The front door is typically painted the accent color.

The main colors and trim colors were earthtones (Elaine's colors). Accent colors were colors like burnt reds, dark navy blues and colors like that. Except one paint scheme had a turquoise accent color.

Choosing a paint scheme is harder than one would think. We needed to consider the paint schemes of the adjacent houses. We needed to consider the exterior stone (brick) colors.

Making a very long story short, the office manager (Bobby Jo) and I agreed the paint scheme with the turquoise accent was the best choice. That particular PRE-APPROVED paint scheme was not used on any other house in the neighborhood. It looks great.

Word got back to our office, the owners of the house next door to the turquoise accent want us to repaint the house. We ignored that, we're PRE-APPROVED by the HOA.

A few days later I received a call form our realtor.

Realtor: Monner, I'm showing the house to perspective customers, can you come down here.

Me: I'll come right over.

Realtor: Who painted the house?

Me: I did.

Realtor: No really, who painted this house?

Me: No really, I painted this house.

Realtor: It needs to be painted again.

Me: The colors are PRE-Approved.

Realtor: We can't have a house painted like this.

Me: PRE-Approved.

Do you want to guess who the villain is?

Don't these people know who I am? (Monner of Dyed by Darrell) Did they get their color sense from Elaine? I have been told for over forty years my colors don't match. (And now I am PRE-APPROVED). Besides, if somebody wants to come up with $650, we can paint it again. And I get another chance to show my color sense, AGAIN.

Our crazy lives!

Monner