Slapping and Shoveling

Ah, spring, when the daffodils are blooming, the sky is its deepest shade of blue, the wheat fields are bright green, and the overwhelming smell of paint fumes are in the air. At least that overwhelming smell is heralding spring in the House on the Corner.

We don't do a lot of painting around here, but in a few weeks we're having special house guests and it would be nice to look a little less like Broken Acres and a little more as if we cared where we live.

We do care! Honestly, we do! But have you ever noticed that you don't really see the decrepitude that is building up all around you until you see it through the eyes of potential special house guests? It took a few weeks but I've climbed back from the original ledge I scurried onto when we heard these guests were coming ("Hey, guess what, Husband? We have four weeks to burn this place to the ground and find a different house!") and we're slapping on paint and shoveling out accumulations dating back 30 years.

But because it's tax season, we are not actually doing the slapping and shoveling ourselves. We are hiring it done! Please add six more exclamation points after that last sentence, because were there ever more glorious words in the English language? With the possible exception of "Here's your free pedicure," of course.

Anyway, this week the painter was ready to start on the living room, the color of which was the fuse that lit the worst fight Husband and I have had in our 32 years of marriage. We do not do colors well. So rather than having to pick a new living room color, we wisely resolved to use the same color that resulted from that epic fight.

"The living room needs to be Celadon Green," I told the paint guy proudly, because after that whopper of a fight I had brilliantly written the color name on a note on the inside of the kitchen cupboard where I keep the big stockpot and the Band-Aids and and the light bulbs and all the other things you need in a kitchen but not every day.

Let me say that again, because I'm sure you didn't catch the importance of that statement: I WROTE THE COLOR DOWN. And then I knew where to find where I'd written it. This is unprecedented efficiency, people.

"Sounds great," the painter said. "Too bad that company isn't making paint any more."

And even though I had brilliantly kept the paint chips for the dining room and the sun room and the downstairs bathroom and the kitchen (even though I hate and despite the color of this kitchen and cannot wait to get it repainted), I did not seem to have the paint chips for Celadon Green.

Gloom and despair.

But wait! Look what I found behind the stockpot and Band-Aids and lightbulbs:

Wooohoooo! Paint chips for the colors I had hand-written on my note. Now the painter could take the one marked L. Room to the paint store and using fancy-dancy modern technology, could uncover the secret formula of Celadon Green.

And he did, and he painted, and the room looks beautiful.

Paint-slapping completed. On to the shoveling.