The door bell rang in the middle of writing the post below. To my surprise, because I wasn’t expecting them until Monday, the painting crew had arrived and was wasting no time getting down to the business of transforming my house. My shock registered on my face. It’s not a problem that they started work on Friday. Uh, yeah, I’m tired of feeling like my knickers are showing to the whole neighborhood—I’m ready for this house to have a new dress! But, I wasn’t ready to be ready.

Being ready means knowing what color you really want on your house. And while you might have chatted with your spousal unit for hours on end, and in the haze of too much red wine in the wee hours of the morning, you might have actually consented to make a decision, you certainly aren’t ready to actually commit to those colors! I mean, that was the wine talking, not you! And you had no idea that in turn, your spousal would immediately email the painter and let him know your choices! I mean, that would be ridiculous. What kind of fool would do that, take you at your word, however intoxicated? The nerve of that man.

An aside: this very man took a phone call from me in November that went a little like this:

Me: I’m in Portland and I miss you, the conference was great but I’m tired and I have a HUGE migraine. I’ve been thinking, maybe we should talk about having your family out to Astoria for Thanksgiving?

Him: Oh, sweetie, I miss you too. Drive safely and we’ll talk when you get home.

What he really meant was: Oh sweetie, I miss you too. Drive safely and I’m going to call my sister the minute you hang up.

Yeah, we hosted Thanksgiving dinner alright. And it was fine. Just like the paint will be fine. But, not before I’ve had my requisite melt-down.

Being ready also means having picked a few paint options and having slapped them willy nilly on your house, you’ve come to a definitive choice about color. That is not what you see in the picture above. Oh no, no, no. No, we did not heed your advice. Ok, I did! But I heeded it in a “Sweetie, I think this would be a good idea” kind of way and he heeded it in a “Do I look like I have time to do this right now?” kind of way. It didn’t get done.

In my defense and his, we’d planned to do this today. But, yeah, then we weren’t expecting the painting crew on Friday. And, don’t be hatin’ on the painter, because he’s not exactly to blame for this wee crisis as we emailed him our choices! (and he’s the brother of a reader and a very cool guy who’s been nothing but fair and helpful and did I mention the brother of a reader???) He gave us advance warning and every time, he wasn’t committing to specific times but “weather willing.” In Astoria, he has every reason to hedge his bets and manage our expectations. However, my expectations were for later rather than sooner, and Mother Nature refuses to be managed! On both fronts I wasn’t making an entirely uneducated guess, work crews in general and the weather specifically, it is Astoria after all! I just thought I had more time to be ready.

So, Friday came with a jolt, and became today; a lovely man offered to slap up the color combination before he took off (they’ve been mostly prepping) so I could get an idea of what my drunken stupor had produced. That was when Wende had a little fit.

Little fit is a Southern euphemism for OH HELL NO, YOU DID NOT TELL THE PAINTER THAT COLOR. Except there were a few, ok a lot, of swear words tossed in. And at one point I held his new Wii hostage and elicited reinforcements from the mailman—who, by the way, was completely non-committal. Handed me my mail and ran, that man did! It wasn’t pretty, but we’ll skip all that because it makes me look bad and this is my blog.

Here’s the thing, I don’t like making decisions. I’m the epitome of indecisive and I am genetically predisposed to buyer’s remorse. It wouldn’t have mattered what color went up, I’d be freaking out right about now because I made a decision. I wanted chocolate not strawberry. I wanted red wine not white. I wanted French toast not waffles. You see the issue, right? Not only does it take me forever to make up my mind, when I do, it’s usually wrong. (You should have been around for the pregnancy talks!) But, if I stay true to pattern, then it’s only a matter of time before I am convinced of my decision and settle down into a sense of wellbeing. Wellbeing just doesn’t arrive without a little fit throwing.

Anyhow, all is well. After a frantic phone call to the painter (promptly returned, my God, does that ever happen??) we’ve been told to think about it. And the more we think about it, the more we’re convinced that we just need to take the plunge and dive into this color. So, here we go.

Color Note:
For those of you who can’t walk by the house— Sherwin Williams: Cyberspace, Online, Snowbound, and Open Air.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 12th, 2007 at 6:37 pm and is filed under This Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.