I think it was Reader Pat who came up with “Blinx”…to jinx yourself via your blog.  And I’ve done it…OH how I’ve done it.  You know when something in your gut tells you that something isn’t quite right, but you IGNORE it, to your own detriment?  Yep, you know that feeling.  We’ll start by pointing out that my refrigerator is in my living room and you’re looking at plywood covering my first floor.  That wasn’t exactly the plan for today.  But I digress….So let’s say you get a recommendation from a friend of a friend of a who knows what, and you find a flooring company that will sell you “Seconds” wood flooring.  That’s REPORTEDLY a box of wood flooring that has APPROXIMATELY 20% unusable wood.  Most boxes contain about 10%, so, let’s say if you got that wood for 2 bucks a square foot, making about a 60% savings, then you only need 10% extra, and that equates to wood flooring at 50% off the normal going rate.  If, let’s say, you are a bargain hunter, you may have thought you scored your coup of the decade.

YOU DID NOT.  Your gut told you something wasn’t quite right, but you were so desperate to get rid of that old carpet and laminate that you said, “HEY GUT, I know what I’m doing, now zip it.”  Karma and your gut were in cahoots, but again, you pushed the ignore button.

Then, let’s say you get some great and talented flooring guys who tell you if you can get the wood, they have 2 free days and can work you in as a filler project.  That is also a good price.  This game you’ve played before, and this part you know is good.  You hire the flooring guys.  This move may be your saving grace.

They show up ON THE DOT on time, A HA!  Let’s get this party started.  They open the first box.  And groan.  Second box, the groans turn to gasps.  They call you outside, where you find that 100% of the box is unusable.  What?  Is that Lori Math?  Nope…even Lori can accurately calculate 100%.

Basically, you just bought thousands of dollars of firewood.  You don’t need a coupon for firewood, you need a lawyer.

The flooring guys have 2 days, the clock has already started.  You have no wood.  You have a birthday party in 3 weeks.  You have moved about a billion pounds of JUNK off your main floor.  You’ve been looking forward to this day for a year.  Be careful…Karma is watching.

Your husband reminds you that your second choice, and maybe even his top choice, is in stock, around the corner at Menard’s, for a very good price.  At 8am, you pile the children, the contractors, and the husband who has had the flu for 4 straight days into the car and make a run for it.

WHERE YOU SPEND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS ON WOOD FLOORS…AGAIN.  Hoping that the other flooring company will take back their seconds?  You bet you’re hoping they will.  You’re probably sweating more than that super sick husband who just broke his 50th fever this week. You look at your husband as the kids climb like monkeys all over the wood and the contractors look at you like you are the world’s most gullible housewife and say, “How mad are you?  You must be furious.  I’m so sorry I bought that wood.”  To which he might reply, “This is just as much my fault.  If I weren’t so cheap, you would have never bought that wood.”

You have the wrong wood, but you have the right husband, and that is more important than floors. You try to keep that in mind as the flavor of the day continues to be “OMG, that can’t be right”.

Load up, take it home, get it there, and realize it is NOT AT ALL THE SAME COLOR as the wood you picked out originally from the seconds dealer.  That was the wrong wood, but it was the right color.  Now, you are staring at the right wood, in a perhaps, more questionable color.  Knowing you are horrible at decorating, you call your Father and beg him to tell you it will be alright (as you stuff your mouth with donuts, praying Karma loses your number quickly).  He tells you matchy-matchy isn’t always a good thing and he knows a neat trick to make wood floors match kitchen cabinets.  Worse case scenario, you replace the crown molding on the top of the kitchen cabinets to match the floors, and the whole thing looks custom.  My Dad is a rock star.  After 30 years in the wallcoverings business, he should know.  And then he reminds me to call my extraordinarily gifted interior design sister immediately, if not sooner. She might prefer you stop for an intermission at this point and tell your readers that she is only responsible for your daughters’ room and the playroom.  All other decorating decisions in your home were made without her approval, perhaps even with a warning, and knowing she was right, you’ve had to live with those decisions every single day since.

In the meantime, you let the girls take markers to the nasty carpet.  When the husband asks “Why”, you say…Why Not?  They are so thrilled, that when you give them the list of things they CANNOT mark up, they quickly realize you didn’t add “each other” to that list.  They mark up the carpet, and then, that’s right, they mark up each other.  BUT NOT THE WOODWORK, they carefully point out. Karma is riding your tail now…but you are the bull rider of Karma…and you don’t fall off easily.

It’s possible Mommy added a bit to the artwork.

The banging and banging and so much of that banging is too much for your nerves.  You pack up the kids and head up north for a swim playdate with your niece, thinking if you try to blend in with another family, Karma might lose you in the mix.  In the meantime, the husband has both been to the doctor, been diagnosed with really awful and not at all lovely food poisoning, has gone to work, realized he couldn’t do it, and returned home for his 4th day in bed.  You know what’s fun in the middle of major home remodeling?  Single parenting. But you are grateful he’s yours, because at this point, he’s so sick, he wouldn’t notice if you laid down solid gold flooring at $1000 per square foot.  Then the seconds dealer calls, seems quite surprised after having successfully sold 30,000 square feet of seconds, and says of course he’ll take it back and return your money in full. And he completely understands you buying the back up wood somewhere else.  You’re outrunning Karma, but just by a nose.

On the way to the swimming on the 95 degree day, it starts to thunderstorm.  Ha ha Karma, kiss my ass.  KISS IT.  On the drive, you call your Mother who reminds you again to let your sister fix this mess.  You agree…this is WAY over your head.

You fall down the stairs at your sister’s house.  Because really, the day hadn’t been long enough?  REALLY?!  You open the back of the minivan to show your sister the wood, expecting her face to do that THING…that thing it does every time you make a horrible and just plain unfixable decorating error; her muscles in her face all try to escape from her skin at the same time, but in different directions.  And then her frontal lobe freezes up, her eyes close, her lips tighten, and she breathes deeply and says, “OOOOKKAAYYY?”  Like, “OK?  Were you wearing blinders when you picked this out?”

But wait, her face doesn’t fly off her skull.  Her eyes open wide, and she says, “Well…WELL that’s OK!  That’s just fine!  That’s perfectly normal average wood that would go anywhere!”  WHAT?  It’s not too pinky in tone?  It doesn’t have a red undertone that will look atrocious against everything you own?  It won’t require that you take down your entire house and start over?   Nope, apparently, it’s quite good.  See?  Matchy Matchy is highly over-rated.  When someone ELSE does the mismatchy matchy.  When you do it?  It looks like a really bad yard sale from 1975. You’ve learned to live with this defect.  No one is good at everything.  You can’t dance and you can’t decorate.  Life goes on.

Off to pizza to celebrate your defeat of Karma, and then to the fabric store, where your sister picks out a fabric you would have never chosen, that she holds up to the wood sample and your paint colors, and a gigantic light turns on around you.  There is something decorators have that normal people don’t.  I don’t know how they do it, but when they piece together textures and colors…you see something you could have never done yourself.  It’s a picture from a magazine that you love, but you don’t know why.  Something as simple as new curtain fabric for the windows and chairs and pillows…and DONE…the entire first floor will flow and match and coordinate and look not just adequate…not just free of knicks and stains…but quite lovely.

Maybe you tear up in the home interior aisle of JoAnn Fabrics.  Maybe a huge weight lifts off you when you realize you didn’t throw an unreal amount of money down the drain.  Maybe you are quite grateful you’ve learned to take a little advice from your sister and admit you don’t know it all.  Maybe you take that quilt you promised your niece and move it to the top of your “To Do” pile.  Maybe you make a mental note that the next time you waver endlessly over $40 Chanel pants at the Consignment store, you’ll remind yourself you’ve made much bigger errors.  Because at the end of the day, you like a deal, but you don’t buy JUNK.  Quality at a deal, but not crap that looks horrible and won’t last.

You come home exhausted at 10 pm with exhausted children, and absolutely no floor whatsoever on the first floor.  You will not guess, nor print anything pertaining to future activities that may or may not occur in your house.  You’ve been blinxed.  You are cautious beyond all caution.

Remember, this is YOUR BLINX.  I’M NOT BLINXED.  THIS IS NOT MY HOUSE AND I AM NOT WRITING THIS STORY ABOUT ME. It’s not even in the first person, and I am in no way planning or anticipating any home remodeling activities to be occurring in or around my house in the near future.  Stay tuned….