darling lucie -

you've missed the entire month long process of going to every available store for paint chips to pin on the walls to watch in different light, getting small samples to paint patches on the wall and the inevitable muttered swearing of unloading 13 feet of bookcases and dragging them away from the walls so i could get in and tape off the borders.  i have a three day weekend and originally it wasn't supposed to rain and remain dry and cool, so this weekend was cast as the great painting weekend.  now i can barely walk from room to room with all the furniture dragged into the middle of everything; suddenly i have three other time-sucking  things i have to do and it's supposed to pour rain for days...now i just want to laze in bed, reading while the heavy rain pours down, but to even get to the bed is a bit of a climbing challenge at this point.

so a-painting we will go...

ceilings first.  i took the easy way out and picked the same muted blue we had in ann arbor, as i know it works (tho the ceilings here, as i'm sure you remember, are just a standard height and don't arch up towards a mid-beam).  i'm a little worried it's going to turn it into a cave, but it will be an attractive cave, at least.  pretty much the same with the trim, being that flat deepest chocolate black as it can make even the most generic of cheap apartment two inch baseboards seem an architectural feature.  oh, but the wall colours - i've gone completely away from my muted tones.

my bedroom is going to be grey.  yep, grey.  no red, no deep warm terra cotta, no peach glaze layered over a medium cream.  it's a funky deep grey, but not a blue grey, a warm grey and if the four foot test patch is any indication, it is going to be fabulous.  it's so deep that anything you hold in front of it gleams as if it was specially lit - and here's where i let you in on how secretly vain your seemingly above it all, pseudo-cool pro-aging hippie chick mother actually is.  the bedroom was going to be a deep pumpkin orange which played marvelously off the danae print and seemed to go well with the sub-tropical climate in which we now live.

however, i am no longer looking for work, having found my job, attained civil service status and am scarily the youngest on a staff of five.  so, the hair is a funky, chunky very short cut and i am letting the bright white grow back in.  and, unlike my younger blonde self, when i have white hair, i can't wear anything orange, brown, yellow, etc.  looks like utter hell on me.  i don't know why it popped into my mind, but i suddenly realised that if i had painted the walls deep orange, i would have looked hideous every time i was in my bedroom.  shallow?  quite possibly without a single doubt, yes.  smart?  beyond belief.

onto the open living area, which is how i'm  defining that oh so oddly shaped living room/dining room/world's longest hall combo.  are you ready?  no soft butter tone, no sand, no light gold.  we are going for something called "pink belief".  (reminds me of when you were five, fell in love with disney's paint range and we did your ceiling in 'bibity bobbity blue' and your walls in that combo 'tinkerbell pink' and 'princess purple').  "pink belief" is a decadent, decaying, antique darkest rose tone; which - incidentally - is a fabulous colour on me.  and don't feel bad for the wonderboy, living in such a shrine to aging female vanity fully indulged.  he actually picked out the final colour and is a little upset we're not putting it in his room.

(wondering about the wonderboy's  room?  he currently has so much primary red and blue bouncing off the white walls that we are going to wait for another year to see what he would like, before we commit to a paint color or two.  five is a tricky age and i am pretty sure the huge thomas table and his liking for his car/truck/motorcycle/airplane linens is about to go.  he's already been leaning towards a 1950's turquoise and chrome scheme he saw somewhere and is increasingly into playing his guitar and pictures of classic fender electric guitars)

so my darling, i'm spending this long weekend painting, partially in tribute to you and in memory of the time that we moved to the highrise with the window walls and i thought our eagle's nest view of the arboretum was all the decoration anyone could need - and, while persuading me to go goth black on your three non glass walls you used the timeless phrase:  it's like living in a damn igloo with all these white walls...

for you, i will never live in a damn igloo.

and as for what you should take away from this rambling email from your mother and add to your cache of life wisdom i've managed to pass down to you (right after the rules of always plucking three hairs a day to stay perfectly groomed and that one should always spend money on leather goods and buy tshirts from target) remember this:  never paint any room a color that isn't ridiculously flattering to you.

i'll get back to world peace and social justice in my next email.

much, much, much love - mommy