This afternoon I was doing my weekly wall check for slobber bombs and there were a lot as usual, there were even a couple way up high on the wall. I thought to myself, “what does Orso do, stand on his back legs put his front paws on the wall and sling his head around to whip a slobber bomb as high on the wall as he can?” Is this a game with him that he keeps score with Charlie over, “I can shoot a slobber bomb higher than you?” I sprayed the Fantastic antibacterial cleaner over each dried gross blob and scrubbed them off the wall.
I stood back and surveyed my handiwork and noticed the walls now have clean spots where the slobber bombs were, standing out starkly against the rest of the walls. This means that in order to not have lighter colored spots dotted around the room I need to wash all of the walls and clean off a year’s worth of pipe tobacco smoke, dust and god knows what else. I filled a bucket of water and cleaner, grabbed the step ladder and washed all of the walls in the living room. I stood back to admire my work again, and decided that no amount of soap and water were going to improve the look of the walls.
That means only one thing, time to paint the walls. Since I have to paint the walls, I might as well freshen up the room with a new color, a new look. If I’m going to go with a new color on the walls I need to spend some quality time at Lowes and Home Depot staring at paint chips for hours, searching through the myriad of colors and hues in my quest for the perfect shade. For some this may seem to be a chore, but to me this is one of my most fun things to do. Every time we go to Lowes or Home Depot I wander off to the paint department and load up on scads of paint chips. Even if I have no painting project planned I can stand there for hours, just looking at all of colors, thinking about which room I would paint with the different shades. It makes Mitch crazy, when I come home with an armload of paint chips and paint books. Mitch’s idea of painting a room any color other than white is off white. He’s very adventurous don’t you think?
In order to spare Mitch the agony of living through another painting project, I just won’t tell him. I’ll go to Lowes early when he’s at work, stock up on paint chips and stick them all over the wall in the living room to see which one I like best. Then I’ll head back over and buy my paint and paint the room before he gets off work. It will be a surprise and I can guarantee you it won’t be white.
Filed under: Creative Writing, dog ownership, Dogs, humor, Marriage, remodeling woes, short story Tagged: dogs, home, home improvement, labradors, Lowes, marriage, painting, pet ownership, short stories, spousal relationships, women, writing
