A Little Life Lesson from Me...

When someone asks you, "Will you paint this barn door?"

And you say, "Yes... is this paint washable?"
And she answers "Yeah, it is washable... you don't have to be careful."

Do ...
Not ...Believe ...Her!

(The above pictures were made about halfway through the cleaning process. I was understandably a little too freaked out for picture taking in the beginning of this adventure ... plus, I didn't want to touch my camera.)

Yesterday, all the teachers on our hall were decorating for our Hee Haw Celebration end-of-the-year play, which was this morning. Paige, our grade chair, asked me to paint the barn doors. She assured me that the paint was washable (and, in her defense, she thought it was... we later found out someone who'd borrowed the paint set before us had refilled the black paint), so I wasn't careful.

When they made an all-call announcement asking all teachers to come and meet the new assistant principal, I ran to wash my hands. Um... NOT washable. At all. The water just ran off my hand without washing off a trace of the black paint. It literally looked like I'd dipped my fingers and most of my palm in black paint and just let it dry. I made an impression on the new principal and assistant principal with my jet-black painted hand at the meeting, but I'm not sure what kind of impression it was! I tried to laugh it off and play it cool, so hopefully they thought it was funny, too.

Then, as soon as the meeting, I drove like a madwoman to Ace Hardware and bought the strongest paint thinner they had, plus some Go-Jo pumice scrub. I raced back to school and into the bathroom, where unfortunately neither the paint thinner nor Go-Jo really did much good. The 100% mineral spirits just ran off the paint like the water had... not even soaking my fingers in straight paint thinner for a few minutes made a dent. The Go-Jo scrubbed off a little, leaving my hands a nice shade of blackish-purple. What worked, you ask?

Scrubbing my skin with a (never-before-used, thankfully) Brillo pad from the janitor. Ouch!
I've still got some paint in my fingerprints ...and around my nails...(no, nail polish remover with acetone didn't work, either)

but most of the paint is now off my sore little hands. Whew! They are red and raw today, but at least they're relatively paint-free. That's the last time I paint first grade play sets for a while!