The wrong color shutters

The shutters, or volets

The shutters have arrived, at long last, painted the wrong color.

I haven't gone out to say hello and anything else yet. I did call my husband. He didn't reply to his beeper. I called the operator at the hospital.

"Je voudrais parler à mon mari, si c'est possible." They know me. They always chuckle because he gets hundreds of calls a day, and I rank myself as low priority, even when I really need to talk to him.

"Je vais le chercher pour vous. Ne quittez pas." I thanked her and waited.

"Hallo?"

"Les volets sont arrivés, et ils sont pas la couleur choisie."

"Tant pis. Il faut vivre avec." Fine. We'll live with it. I wasn't having any of that. I wasn't happy with "fine".

"Ils sont beaucoup plus rouge bordeaux. Ca change tout. Ils n'étaient pas cette couleur quand ils sont partis à l'atelier pour la peinture. Ils nous ont donné un échantillon, et ce n'est pas ça. On décide quelque chose et ils font ce qu'ils veulent?" They had started to paint them with a brush after hand-sanding them, and while the work was lousy, the color was terrific. This is not it.

"On les ferra nous-même."

"Ils sont bien fait, mais ils sont la mauvaise couleur." We can't paint them ourselves. We'll ruin the factory paint job, unless we use a projection system, but that's besides the point. We paid and they used the wrong color.

"Je te rappellerai plus tard." I knew he was too preoccupied to be concerned with a color issue. I, on the other hand, am only concerned with color issues.

Now they are out there with a measuring tape, trying to figure out which shutter goes where, preparing to install them. It would have been too easy to tag them.

Here I am, preparing to live with them. The right color is on the door just to the left.

I'd like to use the "f" word right now.
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