be concerned

I am. I feel as though I have clawed my way to the top of a deep dark well, slick walls, few hand-holds, moss and grit beneath my nails, and paint. Fuck painting. That's what I say.

It started innocently enough. I just wanted a nice clean coat of paint. Is that so much to ask? And a democratic president. Really, is it so much? So between stints at the phone bank at Obama's World on Division where Howard Dean was last night in person with all the dem high rollers, I painted. And painted. It is no surprise to me that the word begins with pain. Shit.

Recall that I charged into home despot and chose quickly my three shades of paint. Light olive, darker olive, and brick red. Well, it may sound good, but it looked awful. You may think it sounds awful. Well, you'd be right. You should have told me so. I may have listened to you. So I painted for days, and hated the red. Hated it. Again, I tried to tough it out. "Just live with it," my husband said in the same breath he told me it looked like a clown's kitchen. That snapped it. We know I can't live with it, don't we? I can't stand bad color. I HAD TO fix it.

So I did. My shoulders ache. My back is broken, but there is no red in my kitchen except for the antique metal cherries hanging thing next to the sink. So, now two weeks later, four if you count the bedroom, two months if you count the closet room, I am done painting. Finis. Finit. Fino. Fine.

It just shouldn't matter this much. I feel like I have Matching Disease. Some version of OCD wherein I can't relax until everything is just the right shade of ___________. You pick. I'm tired. And accessorizing, which didn't used to matter at all, is mandatory. I used to furnish my home from a goodwill box in the dark, and paint with old cans of any color mixed together, happy if I could fill the holes in the wall with newspaper, slather bondo over it, and make a real wall. At the end of one of my lives, I painted my corner grey. The corner where I sat all day and all night for five years. I painted as far as I could reach and left it at that. I threw an Indian blanket over the mattress on the floor and called it home. But then again, someone had to come and get me out of there before I died. The good ol' days seem so simple in the rear view mirror.

I'm taking a day off work so I can put the house back together. I hate every knicknack I own, and I own plenty, believe it. So I am in zen mode: black rocks in glass vases, thin reeds in off-white jars. The thought of clutter makes me cringe. I will not live in a clown's kitchen. I will not.

Go Obama! I did what I could.