a short-term thing—meaning I’ve come to terms with having my meager authority usurped, but if the sisters don’t move things along I’m going to get a little short with them.
Especially if they don’t stop asking me questions like “Runners or puzzle mats?” I said runners. I have no idea what they were talking about, but as a longtime wearer of panty hose I have some experience with runners. On the other hand, while I don’t know this Matt fellow, I have no desire to sic the sisters onto the poor man with the express purpose of puzzling him.
Kidding. Honestly. Don’t write to explain that runners are strips of carpet and puzzle mat is spongy safety flooring. I do know the difference. If you have to write to offer your help, please, please, tell me how to encourage two highly enthusiastic women that actions speak louder than words. Even their words.
Their lots and lots of words.
Especially when those words are aimed directly at me, asking me the kinds of questions that I am totally unprepared to answer.
NOTE TO SELF: FINISH COLUMN BEFORE SENDING
“Canary or Kumquat? Canary?” Jacqui pulled one four-by-four-inch square slowly back, then whipped a second one up and demanded, “Or Kumquat?”
Hannah blinked at the two paint-sample cards held inches from her nose. She chewed her lower lip, trying not to let the pressure steer her toward the wrong answer. She felt the way she did at the optometrist’s office when he said, “Better like this? Or better like this?”
But at the eye doctor she only ran the risk of getting the wrong prescription and spending the next year trying to look at the world through glasses that she didn’t really need. Flub this choice and who knew how many infants might spend their Sunday mornings in a nursery that could fail, as Jacqui put it, “to stimulate their minds and generate feelings of creativity and security.”
Yikes!
At least she only had one DIY sister to deal with on this. Cydney had staked her claim in the toddler room and at this very moment stood sketching a mural of Noah’s Ark on one wall of the adjacent room. At least Hannah thought the rough pencil lines would eventually represent Noah’s Ark.
Though she had to admit she got that idea more from the singing going on in the next room than from anything Hannah saw on the wall.
“C’mon, Sam.” Cydney’s voice carried through the partially opened door between the two rooms. Loud as she spoke, it could have carried through walls. “One more time, but this round give it all you’ve got. Throw in a little oomph!”
Sam obliged, belting out at the top of his lungs, “‘The Lord said to Noah, There’s going to be a floody, floody…’”
“Hannah!” Jacqui snapped her fingers.
The song faded to a background buzz.
“Canary or Kumquat?”
Hannah studied Jacqui’s face for some hint of what she expected. Finding nothing but intense anticipation, Hannah finally sighed and blurted out, “Um, Canary.”
“Canary?” Her voice cracked.
“Did I say Canary?” Hannah glanced at both squares again. Squinting, she pushed her fingers through the fringes of red hair that had escaped her once neat little ponytail. “Kumquat. Definitely Kumquat.”
“You don’t think it’s too…?” Jacqui crinkled up her nose, exposing the deep lines in an otherwise flawless face.
Hannah involuntarily crinkled her own nose. She squinted, trying to determine the problem with the deeper tone of the two colors. But she couldn’t see it. “Oh, no. Absolutely not.”
Jacqui held at arm’s length the color sample Hannah had chosen. “What about Lemongrass?”
“What about it?”
“Do you like it?”
“As what?” She’d had nightmares like this. Where people spoke to her and she had no concept of what they meant or of what they wanted her to say.
“A color.” Jacqui darted to the paint-spattered tarp bundled against the wall, seized another small card and flipped it around to show Hannah. “How do you like it as a color?”
Hannah shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Jacqui exhaled in a short, sharp blast.
No one could describe either of the sisters as tall or, upon first glance, physically commanding. But when one of them wanted to get her point across, she had the presence of a giantess. And the gestures to match.
“Lemongrass. It’s a color. A very lovely color. I showed it to you last week.” She bent at the knees, arched her back and waved her hand over her shoulder to indicate the past.
“Last—” Hannah waved, too, though weakly and lacking any real direction, much less conviction “—week?”
“We thought it veered too much