I thought I might want something different for our new kitchen. Maybe blue, I thought. Chris wasn't so sure about that. Blue reminds him of bathrooms, and he doesn't like the idea of eating in a bathroom. We liked the color we had picked out for our kitchen in Nashville. I wondered if we had kept the paint chip, but the folder it would be in was probably buried beyond easy reach in the shop. Besides, I did kind of want something different. Somehow, I settled on a very muted olive/gray green. Doesn't that look too gray? Chris asked me. This from the guy that calls khaki "green"? I ignored him. He bought the paint.
Then one day, we decided to paint the kitchen. Problem was, we couldn't find the paint. None of the little smears on the lids of the can looked like the color I (thought I) had picked. Chris pulled out the paint samples, and sure enough, the sample that matched the smear had the color name circled, and -in my hand- was written "kitchen". How is it that I had picked out a color that looked exactly like the skin of a sea-sick voyager? Maybe we can repaint it in a few years, Chris said. Five gallon buckets of paint are expensive, he said. I felt like a sea-sick voyager.
I took the paint back to the store and begged the paint lady to alter the color. You can go darker, she said. I don't want darker I said. I want different. After a 10 minute discussion, and an examination of the color squirt combinations, she put in a squirt of some sort of green. The paint smear almost matched a color I thought I'd be happy with. I thanked her profusely and started the drive home.
But it isn't quite right. It reminds me too much of a blue-touched mint green. I might want something darker. Definitely something a little warmer. And I am in agony.
