Flooring isn't boring

Kevin and I spent a while this morning looking at flooring. The last time I was in a flooring store was approximately 1996 when my parents let me choose the carpet for my room in the newly-finished basement. I gravitated toward a purple-pink-gray carpet that was pretty terrific.

We're not going to dwell on the fact that when I was 10 I played a Connect-Four tournament with my stuffed animals and handed out Reflections ribbons to them. Life really did get better.  

This time around though, I wanted more serious-looking carpets for some reason. After years of almost defiantly not caring about aesthetics, I suddenly want to actually make things look nice.

Kevin convinced me that we ought to register for them anyway for our wedding . . . but we haven't done too much since in the decor department 

So while we were at the wholesale floor place (does the word wholesale make anyone else think Holstein? Now that would be some carpet in a town that gives out string cheese at parades -- some synthetic white shag with black spots. But I guess every time I walked on it I would think of 101 Dalmatians [which we just watched, and Matthew calls it the Marshall puppies movie] and it would make me sad) we learned about all kinds of floors -- laminate, vinyl, tile, etc. It was a lot of fun, even if it was a little bit stressful trying to make sure things would look okay next to each other.

And then we looked at carpet swatches. And I realized that most everyone has a huge gap in our education when it comes to colors. I mean, look at this:

Every single square is a different color, yet all we have are vague qualifiers -- brown, tan, blue, gray, lighter, darker, slightly greener, etc. 

Why don't we have standardized names for all of these colors? I'm sure the names exist somewhere. I mean there's a list of about 20 in that Joseph's Coat song, but no one learns them. And I figure, if kids can remember the names of dozens of dinosaurs or tell when a sandwich looks slightly different than it did yesterday, they can learn the difference between aquamarine, turquoise, and teal. 

So then I scoured the internet. There are about a million videos that teach babies red and yellow and blue over and over, so surely there could be a video that taught kids about puce and ecru. 

So far, no luck.

With so few color descriptors at our disposal, it's no wonder we can't agree on the color of the dress.

Come to think of it, maybe I should see how white and gold would look for carpet.