Okay, so yesterday we went to this old inn for dinner (yes, I know it's summer now, but I liked the winter image best of all the pictures on their website) and Johnny pointed out to me, practically the minute we walked in, a door there that looked a lot like our one I'm so obsessed with.

And I do realize I'm obsessed.

In my defense (especially for those of you who so kindly expressed a refreshingly-honest "Throw it away!" on yesterday's post), this is exactly why I asked for your eyeballs' opinions. I've spent a month now (good god! no -- yes, almost: 28 days exactly) stripping and sanding and bleaching and raining and generally fretting on this door. I simply cannot see it anymore.

Plus -- and this is a story for another day, but -- this is the door that made us buy the house in the first place. The inside of it, which was never painted and which I didn't strip:



was the one thing in the whole house that told us what was possible.

(Hey, how proud are you of me that the inside of my front closet is presentable enough to photograph? And how sure are you that I would have posted the picture no matter what it looked like?)

So anyway, Johnny found this door at the old inn that looked all beat up like ours. I hadn't brought my camera so I asked my brother-in-law to take a picture of it for me (he has a two-year-old: he's never without a camera) and email it to me today so I could show y'all. But he didn't. I sent him an email to remind him, too. Didn't even write back.

Poo on you, Brother-In-Law! It's not like it's your first day back from vacation or anything and you have better things to do!

That's why it's taken me so long today to get around to posting. Because my post was going to be "We went here and I saw this and so I've decided to (as it were) Let It Be."

But while I waited and waited (and waited) for the photo that never came, other people wrote and said and did things. For example, my Nana (my pretend Nana, who I met on the internet like a week ago) took a picture that I sent her and "painted" the door so I could see what it would look like. And it doesn't suck!


It's an awful picture because (aside from the fact that, as we've established, my camera sucks eggs and so do I), Nana asked for a full-length image of the door and in order to pull that off I had to stand outside. And in order to stand outside and still be able to see anything that was inside, I had to do it at night. It's not her fault it sucks, her part came out great! And besides, at least she sent it. Ahem.

(Have I mentioned my new Nana lives in Auckland? As in New Zealand? As in the other side of the freakin' world? But then, I imagine Nana probably doesn't have a two-year-old.)

Anyway, my point is: painting it doesn't seem, now, like quite the arse of an idea I thought it would be yesterday. I'd still rather that it worked out according to my been-doing-this-for-28-days plan, but sometimes, Joel, you've just got to say...

So the new plan is to wait to actually do anything until after the 4th of July, on which day I will have a bunch of people over and I can show them all the actual door in honest-to-goodness-person. That way I can get a real-world, what-does-it-look-like opinion (Mom, no fair sneaking people in and talking them into a beltsand). But if the vote is paint it, I'm okay with that.

(Even though I'm the one that brought it up, I just can't see buying a new one. There's that whole reason-we-bought-the-house thing and besides, I've invested too much time and energy into fixing it up to throw it over for a new one now. I mean, for God's sake, I married Johnny after much less work than this.)

(okay, maybe not much less)

(okay, maybe a lot more)

(but still)

So be warned, those of you who have the dubious honor of attending my half-assed 4th of July festivities (sorry, NanaJan): you will be asked for your opinion.

Except you, Brother-In-Law. You don't get a vote.

P.S. I didn't do anything Puritan today. I got held up at work and then I had to waste a half an hour making fun of Brother-In. But I wasn't supposed to have to do anything yesterday, and I did, so I'm square with my board.

Right Goody?

Right?