A few months ago, I began the long and tedious process of pressure washing and staining our over 2,000 square feet of wood fence. Since the project has been occupying a lot of daddy's free time that would ordinarily be spent with the girls, I tried to get Kaitlyn involved. She was excited at the idea of getting to help daddy and arrived for work wearing her best painting clothes. I gave her a brush and a nearly empty can of paint and told her "paint all the low spots."
It's worth noting that the night before, I repainted her finger nails while mommy was at work. After about fifteen minutes on the fence, Kaitlyn noticed she had gotten paint on a few areas besides the fence, including her nails and hands. I told her not to worry, the paint would come off her nails and they would still be fine. "But daddy, I need to go in now and take a bubble bath." That was the last time she volunteered to paint the fence.
A few weeks later, after making some more progress--and getting plenty of paint on my own nails--I asked Kaitlyn if she thought I was doing a good job.
Pointing to the spot she worked on, I said "Doesn't the fence look nice?"
"No, it's ugly" she responded.
When I pressed her on why she thought it was ugly, here's what she had to say, rather defiantly:
"I wanted purple, then it would be pretty."
I never thought I'd be thankful for my HOA, but without it, I'd probably be repainting the fence.