Kind of Blue

I have been accused in my day of not really noticing or appreciating things my wife Susan does to decorate our house.

I have to say, guilty as charged. About the only things I pay much attention to inside the house are the TV, my recliner and the contents of the refrigerator. As far as the rest of it goes, I may as well live in an Army barracks.

I tried to correct that once years ago, when she was a little frustrated after she had done some decorating and rearranging and I hadn’t noticed it. So one night I was sitting there on the couch, and I said, “You know, I like this lamp.”

“Really?” she said.

“Yes, I think it looks nice in here. I’m glad you got it. When did you get it?”

“About five years ago,” she said.

Oh, well. I tried.

One problem is, women love to watch all of those crazy home decorating and renovation shows that come on TV. They watch these shows and then they get the urge to go do some of that stuff themselves. I tried suggesting she watch a cooking show instead, but all I got was a dirty look.

The other day, riding in the car, she informed me that she had decided she wanted to paint the kitchen. I didn’t understand why. Didn’t we just paint it? I asked her.

“We painted it 10 years ago,” she said.

“Exactly!” I said. “It seems like just yesterday. Plus, I like it the color that it is.”

“Oh, yeah?” she said. “What color is it?”

I wasn’t sure, so I muttered something under my breath, turned up and radio loud and swerved the car violently, pretending a squirrel had run out in front of me, all in an effort to change the subject. Of course, she didn’t buy that, because she knows I hate squirrels, and am more likely to drive on up the sidewalk to run one over than I am to swerve to miss one.

Fine. So I didn’t know, from memory, the color of the kitchen. Knowing when I’m beaten, I gave in and said, sure, I think it would be a great idea for you to paint the kitchen, with an emphasis on the word “you”, cause I ain’t painting nothing!

This set off about a two-week quest to find the right color. She was going with blue, but apparently, there are about 967 different variations of blue paint available at Home Depot. She began to buy samples of the various blues, then would paint a small section of the wall to see if she liked it. Invariably, her initial reaction was to hate it; then, after a few hours, she’d decide she liked it; then she’d come around to hating it again. After a few days, there were so many different colors on our kitchen wall, it looked like the Partridge Family bus.

On about the 20th try, she called me in the kitchen, pointed out a new swath of color and said, “What do you think?” I said, “I think you need to be on Prozac. Just pick a color!”

One angry look later, she had decided on a color. It was blue. I thought it looked great. She hired some guy named Luis to come over and paint my kitchen. He had a puzzled look on his face when he walked in and saw the kaleidoscope of colors on the wall, but I just said to him, “Don’t ask, por favor.” He nodded and went to work.

Now, here’s a trick that women used that I’ve learned about. Basically, I look at home renovations in one way – how much is it going to cost? The price of painting the kitchen, and also the downstairs bathroom, seemed pretty reasonable to me, so I didn’t’ squawk much. But then, she hits you with the sucker punch – now that the room has changed color, everything else in there has to be replaced!

“I need some curtains for the kitchen,” she told me before the paint even dried. Why, I said. “Because, obviously, dummy, the green ones we have don’t match the blue walls now.” And she’s also commenced to buying new accessories for the bathroom, since it changed from whatever color it was before to blue, as well. I’ve hardly seen a woman as excited as she was the other day when she found a blue soap dispenser in Big Lots.

Hopefully, we’re through with the redecorating process for at least a few weeks. Now I can concentrate on the important stuff in the kitchen and bathroom, like leftovers and cold beverages and a stack of National Geographic magazines. I’ll let you figure out what belongs in which room.