The big thing going on around here now, is that Fred and I talked about the house and the walls and the carpet, and both of us think that the carpet is starting to look pretty crappy, and the walls are looking crappy, and various other things need to be done, so we’re looking into taking out a home equity loan to pay off the remaining two credit cards and have the walls painted and new carpet put in upstairs. The walls are all white, except in the kitchen where it’s wallpapered, and while I do like the clean, bright look of white walls, what we failed to take into account is that the white walls in high-traffic areas like downstairs where you come into the house through the garage and up the stairs and in the living room get very dirty very quickly, because someone’s always running their grimy hands along the walls, or a stupid cat is running wildly at the wall, smacking at some unseen something on the wall, and then running wildly away. And our rug, which is SUPPOSEDLY a light gray color, is actually much more of a light blue, though Fred won’t admit it. We’re thinking of doing the walls a light cranberry and the carpets a medium green. I don’t know, though. I’m not any good at the decorating thing, since the most adventuresome thing I’ve done decorating-wise lately is to put up some 5×7 pictures I bought in Maine in my bathroom downstairs:
But anyway, we’ve been talking over the last few days, and we’ve agreed that our house just isn’t very homey, and we need to paint the walls and get some decent furniture in the living room, but we’re just clueless. I told Fred to call his parents, because their house is just gorgeously decorated, and ask their opinion, but apparently his stepmother didn’t really know what to advise, so we’re mostly on our own. Fred kept suggesting different color combinations to me, and I’d say "Yeah, maybe" and shrug, then finally reminded him that he was talking to the woman who picked out the puke-green paint for the extra office last year when they were renovating the company’s office space:
So obviously I don’t know nothing’ ’bout picking out no paint.
Now that I think about it, I guess Fred’s on a real home improvement kick, because the yard guy stopped by yesterday to mow the lawn, and Fred went out to discuss with him what could be done with our front flower beds. They had agreed, at some previous time, that the yard guy (whose name I simply can’t retain for more than ten seconds at a time) would yank up the dead flowers and plant mums. THEN he told Fred that the mums are something ridiculous like $10 a plant, and he could easily fit 20 plants in the front flowerbed. Fred rapidly changed his mind, dithered back and forth, and finally told the guy to just yank up the dead flowers, and we’d maybe buy some bulbs they could plant out there.
When he came inside, we had a ten minute discussion about "Those yellow tulips you had planted out back last year," as Fred put it. Now, I know I didn’t plant any yellow tulips anywhere, because I just hate tulips more than about any other kind of flower, don’t ask me why ’cause I don’t know. "You mean the lilies?" I asked. "NO, the yellow tulips!" he insisted for several minutes. "They were YELLOW and they were TULIPS, and they were planted in that little bit of ground near the patio…" "Oh," I said finally with a gosh you’re kind of a dumbass smile, "Those are called DAFFODILS." I mean, for crying out loud, when they were growing, I gushed hourly about how pretty they were, and how much I love daffodils, and yadda yadda yadda. You’d’ve thought something would have sunk in.
Apparently, you would have thought wrong!
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10/05/2000