standards and practices

In the hierarchy of friends the ones who'll help paint your house lounge atop the mountain in Olympian luxury, sipping mead from spiraling golden horns while satyrs hand-feed them dainty morsels from chased silver platters of distilled culinary delight.

Thanks to Meggsey, Simey and Devritsko for plying their brushes like divine lightning bolts in our service.

We finished off the giant bedroom in a light, slateish blue, turning the strangely proportioned space (ten feet across, running the width of the house) into a restful grotto.

I wanted something warm and happy for the living room to counteract the fog that is the traditional atmosphere of our new coastal redoubt. We settled on a warm, buttery gold, bright and cheery without being clownish.

Devra described the original mucus-y yellowish semi gloss as "white, after 25 years of heavy smoking".

I remember the color from childhood. It was the cheapest paint she could find and always looked damp, like a cellar wall in the low country.

The fancy shmancy Ralph Lauren I picked for the living room was thirty bucks. The blue for the bedroom was fifteen.
What would Brand X Off White run?
The house I grew up in, you could do the whole interior with one gallon.
Sure we were dirt poor, but she could've covered the difference with cigarette money.

Mom had a two pack a day habit.
She smoked Bel Airs because they came with coupons, one per pack and a bonus sheaf for buying a carton, like Green Stamps.
She kept them in a little wicker suitcase under the television, rubber banded bales of 100 packed in tight layers, prop drug money from a children's play.

She traded them all in one day, mailed off for a vacuum cleaner and some trinkets.
The cancer was unimpressed by this shell game.

I like painting the place the way I liked helping my grandpa drain the garden pond. Once its done you can see the fish again.