Editor’s Note: I’m disappearing for a couple of days. Here’s an older column just for fun.

In my mind, there are two kinds of painters; ones who use canvas and ones who use walls. I am neither. I took an oil painting class once. When the teacher saw my finished obligatory bowl of fruit, she looked me square in the eye and said, “Honey, stick with writing. This fruit looks rotten.”

If you arm me with a brush and a bucket of paint, what ensues could be considered house abuse in 27 states. There’s always more paint on the floor and me than the walls. Michelangelo I am not.

Problem is, I don’t really like white walls and it’s just about as easy to find a good painter as it is to find a man with a full set of teeth in this county.

So imagine my delight when an old friend called and said he needed a place to stay for a few weeks until he started his next big project. Now you know that house guests, like fish, start to stink in about 3 days, so I was a bit reluctant. That was until he said for his room and board he would paint the inside of my house. “Great!” I exclaimed, “I’ll pull out the 7,142 paint swatches I’ve gathered over the last three years and pick out some colors!”

As scheduled, the Pondering Prince of Painting arrived at the appointed hour. I wined and dined him the first night. At 6 am the next day, I was in his face armed with hues of blue. PPP rolled his eyes and said, “You’re one of those with that dreaded paint disorder: Compulsive Color Indecision.”

How right he was. When I head to the Big City Home Improvement Center they say, “Oh no! Here she comes. By the time she leaves we won’t have one blue color sample left.” I’m probably on the paint swatch terrorist list at the Sherwin Williams corporate office.

Luckily, the Pondering Prince of Painting knew how to talk me down. In about 30 minutes I had actually made a decision on a very light blue called Mountain Air for the guest room. He headed to town for a gallon and I headed to Gone Country Martha’s. I was too nervous to watch the color being put up. My Compulsive Color Indecision was kicking back in.

GCM made me rake rocks to calm me down. “Don’t worry,” she said, “it’s just paint. If you hate the color, he can paint over it.”  I snapped and said, “Yes, but how many times do you think he’ll paint the same room over and over?”

I snuck back at dinner time, shaking like a leaf, to see the results. The room looked white. I yelled, “I thought you said you were painting today!” PPP calmly replied, “I did. Just wait till it dries. You’ll see blue.”

I didn’t trust him, but what could I do but go to bed with visions of color swatches dancing in my head. Morning couldn’t come quick enough for me.

As dawn broke, I was studying the Mountain Air. It was beautiful. A light, dreamy color of blue. Pondering Prince of Painting walked up behind me and said, “Well, what do you think?”

To which I replied, “I love it! Paint every room in the house the same color! Paint my car! Paint my chairs!”

With that, he stuck yellow paint swatches under my nose and said, “No. We move on to yellow.”  Unfortunately, my Compulsive Color Indecision kicked back in and all I could see was red.

Spreading laughter around the world…one chuckle at a time.

Mikie Baker
www.mikiebaker.com