Ordinary paint

Another paint job. With a color consultant I picked rose based taupes. The painters started rolling it on and I quickly realized the house was going to look mauve. Shriek!!! We ran to the Frazee paint store and brought home some bland, very light beige paint. What an improvement. The color consultant, who I called with my decorating emergency dashed back over and said, "Oh, but it looks so ordinary." And she's really right and I'm very happy. I just don't have the color gene I guess - she could glance at a paint and say that's green based or blue based. It's all Greek to me, but I know I couldn't sell a mauve house. My painter tells me not to worry about the last minute change. The record holder for changes is a woman who tried 28 colors before finally settling on something. I have 26 to go.

Mauve on the left, ordinary beige on the right

The painter looked at my kitchen ceiling and said "hmmmm..somebody had trouble with a ketchup bottle." Sure enough when I got my glasses on and peered along with him, there are some little dark red dried dots..the famous condiment got splashed up there sometime. As I was peering I realized I was faced with the rare opportunity to interject a poetic quote into the conversation. As I only have two or three left in my rapidly disappearing mental inventory, I turned to him with glee and quoted that perfect jewel of food poetry, the two succinct lines that sum up life for me. Ogden Nash, The Catsup Bottle*.

"If you do not shake the bottle,

None will come, and then a lottle."

My painter cocked his head and I repeated it and he cocked his head again. It was sort of lost on him - not that he isn't a bright guy - but the context wasn't right for poetry I guess. 

New colors

Not to 'dis the color consultant. She has been great. She has given me all kinds of excellent ideas and carefully reviewed colors with me from a color deck before we started. Her approach was logical and I was happy with our choice based on the small swatches and even 2 x 2's placed here and there. Oh, but when it started really covering walls and the house was literally vibrating with the purply mauve, it made my stomach churn.

Shriek....it's mauve

I love color but realize at last that I love it in tiny bits - small paintings, jewelry, designs on tile and dishes. Great expanses of it make me uneasy.  

*There are all kinds of variations on this two liner and all kinds of opinions as to who was the author .