Painting, Wounding with Words, and an Ode to Skorts

I am painting again. No, not the exciting, bohemian, creative type of painting, but the arm-killing, elbow-injuring, ladder-teetering, paint-the-house type of painting. I'm not complaining; the house needed it badly. Another Washington winter and the thing could have vied for haunted-house-of-the-neighborhood status. Luckily, Drew is doing most of the heavy lifting and ladder-teetering, leaving me to do some edging, door-painting, and supervising.

The color took us a long time to decide on. Everything we really wanted to use turned muddy and awful-looking up against our house. The culprit was the roof shingles, which are an odd mixture of old-brick reddish and old-wood tannish. I finally came to the conclusion that to fight the roof color was a bad idea, and we would end up with one of those houses that just look icky for some reason that you just can't put your finger on. I went to the paint store, picked out the color of the roof to work from, then found a tan color that would coordinate with it nicely, and chose a nice, dark reddish brown for an accent color.

For some reason, the choice of tan was a hard one for Dean to accept. He wanted anything but tan. Don't ask me why tan affects him like that. We all have our color issues, I suppose. So when he came home from work and saw the new, vast expanse of tan, his anger at our indifference to his tan aversion must have forced him to use his words to wound. And he chose carefully. To me, he said the house looked awfully "fleshy." As if to intimate that I, an artist, could not tell that I had chosen the color of flesh to surround my house with. That's okay. I can accept his angry words.

For Drew, he chose to use the word "pink." The word most feared by he-man fire fighters. Drew took it more to heart than I did until I explained that Dean had just used the word that would cause him the most pain, as he was feeling such pain from the tanness. We must understand and sympathize.

Drew said he will feel much better when he moves out and doesn't have to look at it any more. There is that too. And the fact that we have gotten five compliments from neighbors - some that we didn't even know. Until now, I guess.

And now a word about skorts. Skorts rock. They are so much more worthy of a new fashion fling than the awful, awful capri (especially for those of us with a few inches less leg than others).
And they are so much more useful than that other word hybrid, the spork, which is neither a functioning fork or a spoon that won't, on occasion, give you an unintentional tongue piercing.

Skorts, for someone like me whose legs are slightly less fabulous than they were a few years ago, tend to hang a little longer than your average short, which makes me feel a little safer in them. For instance, while driving or riding in the car, I don't have to look down and see things jiggling that should never, ever be jiggling. However, it is short enough that it leaves the best leg parts out, for either viewing or cooling. And I can sit cross-legged on the floor and brush my dog or work in the garden without the danger of the skirt. I have three skort and I pretty much wear them interchangeably all summer. If I had four, I would have one more.

That's what I'm thinking.