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My So-Called Life

Friday, I sent off the completed manuscript for my new novel, GOOD LUCK. And then I collapsed on the sofa, while I rested my fingers, cramped from weeks of furious typing, and thought about all the things I could do now that I’d finished the book. The walks I’d take on the beach. Playground trips with Sam. Catching up with friends.

I woke up on Monday with the best of intentions to relax. I took Lulu for a long walk on the beach. I worked through my backlog of emails. I read a stack of books to Sam. I made chicken nachos for George.

By Tuesday, the novelty of this leisure had completely worn off and I decided I couldn’t take one more minute of not having a project to work on. So I marched off to the Home Depot, bought a gallon of sapphire blue paint, and spent the rest of the day slapping it up on the kitchen wall.

“What do you think?” I asked George excitedly when he came home that evening. “Don’t you love it? Isn’t it pretty?”

George just stared, first at the walls and then at me.

“What?” I asked defensively.

“It’s just so . . . bright. It actually hurts my eyes,” he said.

“So you really don’t like it?”

“If this color was a noise, it would be an eight-year-old playing the trumpet,” George pronounced.

(Back in our younger, wilder days, George and I lived in a duplex occupied on the other side by a family with an eight-year-old who played the trumpet. He was not good. In fact, he was so bad, his parents used to make him go outside to practice. This would have been bad enough, but was made worse by the fact that they would tell him to stand on our side of the house, by our back door, while he played. And then they had the nerve to act offended when I complained about this to them.)

And now that I've had a few days to consider my rashly chosen paint color, I have to admit George does have a point. It is . . . bright. Very, very bright. So today I’m heading back to the Home Depot to buy more paint. And primer, to cover my earlier mistake.

Posted 15 November 2007 at 09:32 AM