Wednesdaily with disappointment

I am so discouraged.

The husband and I went carpet shopping last night, and our choices... suck.

It costs about twice as much as we were planning to spend to get nothing like what we wanted. Where are the colors? I wanted a dark midnight blue, or a royal red, or maybe a really rich looking brown. What choices are in town? Beige. Various shades of beige and cream. Who wants to spend that kind of money on BEIGE? We went to four stores, scoured the remnants, looked at everything they had in stock, and it's just... pathetic. There was one remnant that we both loved, a gorgeous, plush, dark blue... that was several feet too short in each direction. We can break the bank and order something that we'll get in 6 weeks, but that is in every way not what I want to do. I was so looking forward to having an attractive floor for once, and now... pfff. Even if we had the money to special order something, it's more than a month off. SO discouraged.

Also, I think I'm getting a cold, my back hurts like CRAZY and I slept like crap.

And last, but not least, I was so disappointed by the carpet shopping that I spent the evening sulking - and didn't do the ONE thing that I needed to get done yesterday, which is update my Amazon listings before my professional account expired... which it did at 4:30 this morning.

ARGH.

So, I'm out another month of fees, which I will cough up in November, when maybe pre-Christmas sales will make it worthwhile, and I will actually have some of the new titles in stock.

On the topic of mixed blessings, I do have some paid work to do today; it's nice to finally have some to do, but I mostly just want to go back to bed today.

Off to do that, and see if accomplishing something makes me feel better.

More carpet news....

You guys? Are awesome. *hugs* Thank you so much for the ideas and comfort and empathy. (Seriously, what is up with the general consumer love of bland colors? I faced this with the house siding and even my car... GIVE ME PIGMENT, ALREADY!)

My fortune cookie said 'Don't give Up!'*, so we went back to the first flooring store we'd visited with less critical eyes, because we'd eliminated a lot of their choices before we went to the other stores and realized that their selections were even slimmer.

There, we found a roll of the most GORGEOUS green carpet remnant, exactly in the right size, a lush, deep plush, and just about choked up our Chinese food looking at the price. It was just under $4/SF, which was a lovely savings off the original price (closer to $10/SF!!), but... Oof. The budget, it is not THAT flexible. So, we found a salesperson and attempted to talk them down on it. No can do - it was already on extended clearance and had been marked down twice. It was really NICE carpet. But wait... the salesman said, you know, if you like this, we've got a roll in back almost the same color that's also on sale, for less than $2/SF, and he scoured the in-stock sample shelves we'd already been through twice and discovered that they didn't have a sample out. It took 15 minutes and another salesperson and a dip into a random pile at the top of the rack to find a single remaining sample of the roll in question. It is a very nice medium silvery sage green color, plush (if not as deep and silky a plush as the coveted roll), and an excellent mid-grade quality. It was slightly bluer than the roll, which was a plus, it is in stock, and, while it's more than I was hoping to pay, is still within our budget.

I'm getting a carpet! Within a week!

We hopped over to Lowe's and bought a nice sage green wall paint, with which to paint our new walls tonight. We were looking at several very dark greens, but a helpful salesman suggested a lighter one, and after holding it up next to some raw pine boards (and our hard-won carpet sample), we had to agree.

So, it was definitely a good day for helpful salespeople. Horrah!

I finished most of my programming this morning, but not all of it, so I need to dive back in now. I got a handful of paintings mailed yesterday and hope to get more out tomorrow!



*We had actually already been planning to return to that flooring store, but the extra prod from the Universe was nice.