Painting...

It's after 1:00 a.m., and I'm still up. In most cases, people who are up at this hour are either:

• Just getting back from a night of partying
• Sick
• Sick from a night of partying
• Addicted to Spider Solitaire

 Thankfully, I am not sick, and I gave up Spider Solitaire a few months ago when it started interfering with my Fecebook time. However, I am also not up late because I've been boozing, carousing, and painting the town red. I'm up late because I have been painting my bathroom.

Painting holds a strange fascination for me. It is Home Improvement 101 - a task easily doable by anyone with opposable thumbs and a tolerance for fumes. It is cheap, fast, and effective. (Those are the same qualities that I look for in diet plans, small kitchen appliances, and laxatives, by the way.) Anyway, I never cease to be amazed at what a profound difference a coat of paint can make in a room, though I must clarify that I mean that in both its best and worst possible ways.

I am not good with color. I once decided to paint my daughters' room a nice, cheerful yellow. So, I went to the paint section of my local hardware store. After staring at 14,768 different colors of yellow, I pulled the last one that was visible before temporary blindness set in. (Apparently, staring at a wall full of different shades of yellow has the same effect as starting at the sun. That, or my brain did its best to protect me from the sensory overload I was experience by tuning out my vision for a moment so I could escape. Either way - I wouldn't recommend this as a way to fill your Saturday afternoon.)

Once I got home, I immediately set in covering the deep blue walls of their room (which had been my dreadful attempt at creating an 'under sea' feeling) with the cheerful yellow. Big mistake. The blue had at least been sleep inducing, as it was depressing and dark. I swear to you, my daughters didn't sleep more than 20 minutes at a stretch for the first three months after the yellow went up. I don't know if it was the incandescent brightness of the paint, or the hum it seemed to emit that caused the problem. I had never before really understood what people meant when they said some colors are, "loud" until I put what can only be described as Screaming Yellow paint on the wall. Paint - 2. Annie - 0.

My problem, I guess, is that I don't get color. I have a friend who can go on for several full minutes about a particular shade (or hue, or tone - or whatever color people refer to color as) that she saw months ago on the sole of a homeless man's shoe. I always hear people talk about things like, "a slightly lighter shade of green, with a touch of mauve" or "a deep orange, only without so much brown." What!? Look - I learned everything I need to know about color (and much else) in Kindergarten. Green is a combination of blue and yellow. Orange is a combination of red and yellow. Unless my teacher was lying to me, there ain't no mauve or brown in either of them, right? This is almost assuredly why I almost failed art in high school.

So, this time I'm determined to make my painting transformation a dramatic positive experience, in an attempt at both improving my bathroom and redeeming myself from the last go around. (Heaven only knows what health problems a bad color could make when applied to a bathroom, after all!)  So, after much deliberation, I went with white. I even called my friend to let her know that I had made a sensible, fool-proof decision. Her only reply was - and I'm still pondering this in my every spare moment - "what color white?" Seriously?

I'm glad to say that, despite having had to stay up til the wee hours of the morning, I'm pleased with the results. The white made the room look bigger, neater, cleaner, fresher, brighter - everything a person wants out of a new coat of paint. (Paint - 2. Annie - 1. Take THAT, Screaming Yellow!!)

As I was wearily rinsing out my brush and tidying up a few minutes ago, I wondered if I had made the right choice in staying in and doing home improvement projects instead of going out and partying. In the end - I think I chose wisely. I bet my can of paint was cheaper than a round of drinks. Plus, I actually burned calories this evening, instead of consuming them. And, most importantly, I'm not sure I can be trusted to paint the town red anymore. After all - I might pick the wrong shade...