PAINTING

Bernie and I painted our bedroom walls yesterday. We are keeping green, but the new paint is a darker color, somewhere between sage and olive which is what I wanted when we first painted the walls 13 years ago. That time, I was the one who went to the paint store with a tiny paper square sample that I thought was sagish but when we actually threw it on the walls it was more like limish. Color identification is illusive to me. Two of my daughters, Kate and Heidi, have the eye for color. I have shopped with both of them and one might say, “This would match your new skirt perfectly” or “This is the same color as your bedspread.” I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how they could envision the skirt’s or bedspread’s colors without the item actually with us.

After my failure in the bedroom, Kate and Heidi picked the paint for the main part of our house, living room, dining room and kitchen. In our house these are almost one room. I wanted the look of the walls of some of the Italian or Mexican restaurants I’d been in. They did great. The paint job is blotchy, a base color somewhat like southwestern clay with other colors swept and dabbed over that. I was so afraid of what was to happen had to leave the house during the painting project. The finished product is so wonderful that I don’t think it will ever be repainted as long as we live in our house. This should be fine since the walls don’t really show the dirt.

When Bernie and I went shopping for paint for our bedroom a couple of weeks ago, I had a bit of a melt-down in Menards. We stood at a display and studied the little squares and the pamphlets that were supposed to help us envision the room with walls 10,000 times the size of the sample. We picked out two or three that looked good. Then we went to another display with samples by different brand of paint and picked up a few of these. When I turned and saw that there were five more such displays, I started to go into panic mode. Tears welled up. Bernie looked at my face and suggested I go sit in the car…which I did and cried a bit there. When he came out of the store and got in the car, I said, “I can’t do this. You pick the paint and I will be happy with whatever you pick.” He sure got nice after that. I think he might have been worried that Medicare would not cover my treatment.

The paint job doesn’t look all that good. We both really like the color but we need to put on  a second coat in some areas. Today, Bernie and I are going to a performance of Mark Twain by Don Shelby in St. Cloud. The tickets were my Christmas gift for Bernie. The painting will wait, which is fine with me.