Episode 45: How to Choose a Paint Color

People are always asking me to come help them choose paint colors for the different rooms in their houses. They always say "oh, but your house is so pretty, you MUST come help me choose!" and what they're totally forgetting is that ninety percent of the rooms in my house are painted "Neutral Beige." Seriously. What they're remembering is the fancy green pillows my sister picked out or the artwork on the walls. No one ever remembers that the whole damned house is the color of a day-old biscuit. So I go over to their houses and I choose the most outrageous colors just because I never get to. "Lilac Explosion." "Chartreuse Cocktail." "Camel Toe Camel." And I always choose whichever one based solely on the name of the paint chip, which is how at least one friend ended up with a "Bruised Clavicle" living room. What makes it all funnier is that I'm almost completely color blind. Why do you think all these dumb drawings are in black and white? I can't see red when it's mixed up with green, or vice versa, which makes things interesting at the grocery store. Bag of limes, bag of tomatoes, what's the difference, right? And also I have trouble in the teal/aqua/turquoise department, but that's probably perfectly fine since I'm not decorating the set of Miami Vice anytime soon.

I recently got asked by my friend Carol to help her choose paint colors and stuff and before things got out of hand, my sister stepped in and did a little damage control and the decorating day was saved so to celebrate we all went to a furniture store to look at fabric for a fancy custom ottoman and the salesman who was helping us was very terse and condescending with my sister (who has an interior design degree) and he slammed the sample book shut and said "so, are we done here?" and that was a big mistake, let me tell you. Because whatever happened next was not going to be fun...for him. It's like when my mother gets mad: you know you're in trouble when she starts a response by saying "now you look here...." My sister's "tell" is the raised eyebrow. And when he slammed that sample book shut, her eyebrow shot up so fast it hit a chandelier that was on display far overhead. I think I actually said "uh-oh..." out loud. So all that ended badly and he lost the sale because my sister did some research and found the ottoman elsewhere and cheaper. So there's a lesson for you, somewhere in there.