Good God, it’s PINK

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m now officially LOSER BEHIND with my little noir/murder serial that I keep threatening to continue. And now, drum roll please...nay, not drum roll...duck call followed by kazoo please....I think the problem that has plagued me my entire life, namely the inability to finish what I start, has reared its way-ugly head. My habit of non-completion effects many things. Piano lessons, Violin lessons, College (the first time around), sign language class, a half assed run at a first career, cleaning my pantry, writing the great American novel, or novella, cleaning behind my stove, reading the entire works of Herman Hesse...I think the only things it doesn’t effect are sex, cooking, eating and painting a room. Perhaps in that order, perhaps not. Which brings me to today’s lament……The Terra Cotta Blues.

I am known to respond to extreme stress by taking on a redecorating project. The number of homes, rooms, gardens that have been reconfigured, re-painted, re-accessorized, roto-tilled, weed whacked or just plain spruced up is rather extensive. I would not say that the aforementioned was my true calling due to the circumstances that surround these Extreme Projects (Incidentally, I am sickened to find out that all those poor bereft people helped by the team at Extreme Makeover-Home Edition have to pay taxes on the improvements as if they are game show winnings, and pay the increase in property tax as a result of the improvements. Sort of takes away that feel-good-for-humanity cry I used to get when I used to watch.) Anyway...the last week that was spent caring for maMAH and grandmaMAH (see previous blog) was done on high functional mode – that means be very pleasant, take care of what’s in front of you and never show fear. And never go off on grandmaMAH for watching Bill O’Reilly. So I think what happened when I arrived home on Saturday night was that after greeting Manpants and the dogs and sleeping in my own bed for one whole night, waking up to the reality of losing a week of work and a week of school, I found it necessary to paint two rooms and a hallway. Three different colors. On Sunday. I started about 11:30 a.m. and finished at 7:00 in time to get to the grocery store, do the shopping, get back home and cook the weekly casseroles. As an outside observer, looking down at myself from the place on the ceiling where I’ve been hanging from my fingernails, I find this somewhat manic behavior a tad...oh...a little outside the realm of...let me see, what’s the word I’m looking for...oh yes - SANITY. But what’s truly insane about this whole thing, what shouts a wakeup call to the heavens and back, or at least to Thalians Center at Cedar Sinai Hospital and back, is, I believe, the Terra Cotta shade I painted the kitchen.

The bathroom got repainted a lovely deep sage (I was thinking of painting SOMETHING with Martini Olive due to an implanted suggestion by Rhonda at Skinny Dipping With the President - but Tashman’s Hardware, the manly-man Hardware store in the heart of Boys Town where even Adam Carolla, formerly of the MAN SHOW has been spotted, didn’t have it.) So, deep sage in the bathroom with white trim, a lovely butter shade down the length of the hallway that warmed up what was previously rather drab, and TERRA COTTA in the kitchen. I think I wanted something Mediterranean. A vacation, perhaps. Anyway, I know I’m a fabulous woman, hear me roar, and that Pink is the new Gray, but I truly loathe pink after overdosing on it as a five-year-old. I hate it. I give money to Breast Cancer research but can’t even THINK about wearing the pink ribbon. Or that scarf that Nicole Kidman wore in that PSA ad in ALLURE or ELLE or GLAMOUR or whatever it was that I was reading while waiting for my highlights to process. I just can’t. So when I stood back to view my handiwork in the kitchen with its new TERRA COTTA HUE, imagine my stunned shock to realize that TERRA COTTA is actually PINK. Albeit a specific shade of PINK that looked decidedly less PINK in the manly-man hardware store, but PINK nonetheless. Manpants likes it. My neighbor liked it. I hate my curtains now and they need to be replaced immediately.

I wonder what would happen if I woke up one morning, decided to knock on a complete stranger’s door and then offer to paint their kitchen TERRA COTTA. Would they call the police or simply bludgeon me immediately...