Teresa and Dave's modest suburban home was reaching the age where it might be considered retro-funky instead of merely outdated, as it was when purchased 15 years ago.  The silver foil striped wallpaper,  looming oak-and-glass chandelier and burnt-orange tiles were long gone - even our long-ignored living wills were signed - before the horrible fact was finally faced:  the kitchen must be remodeled.

Some say that opposites complement each other's strengths and compensate for each other's weaknesses.  Some say that oil and water don't mix; they merely tolerate each other.  I say both. So while an enchanted Teresa floated about the old kitchen, entertaining dreams of sparkling glass tile and gleaming granite glinting with the iridescence of mineral butterfly wings embedded there millenia ago, David calculated the square footage of the cabinet footprint, compared it to the daily minutes spent using the countertop and subtracted the volume of all the pans, dishes and pots stored underneath.

We are a perfect match.

Whether a couple is uniformly at odds (exciting!) or in a perpetual state of amiable agreement (ho-hum), remodeling the most-used room in the house will stretch their relationship.  Decisions, discussions, disagreements and dilemmas abound - so prepare yourselves should you brave this unpredictable realm! Flooring, countertop, walls, footprints, eco-friendliness, cabinet doors and drawers, an island (or not?), convection and/or conventional, stainless versus classic (cheaper) black & is a $700 faucet really that good? At each place the road diverged, this couple's chosen path excluded choices we'd hoped to have (ooh - bronze hardware!) and offer others we dreaded (What? It doesn't come in that color? Why not?)  Around each turn lay a great salivating Gorgon waiting to eat our money alive, drooling over our newly-demolished cabinetry and now-absent appliances.  The Monster knows Teresa can do the dishes in the utility tub for only so long; it knows we will give up that extra thousand for the better stove and a couple hundred more for the sleek undermount sink.  The Beast knows David will adhere to a set of internal quality engineering standards that only he and God fully appreciate. It knows Teresa will remain resolved to experiencing every morning when she pours her coffee the varied texture and colors of real stone flooring, not its pathetic pattern-repeating ceramic stepchild.

Given, as I am, to fits of ecstasy from the random beauty in natural materials, I knew we must have a granite countertop. Granite is majestic; it is ancient history in my split level 70s-era Northwest modern. Granite is also expensive. ("Pretend" granite is even more expensive - huh?).  So we went granite shopping and I learned the grandeur that a granite warehouse represents.  In this rich wonderland, giant two-sided palettes support 8-foot slabs of breathtaking polished stone, 4 or 5 to a side.  The warehouse contains aisles and aisles of palettes, undoubtedly millions of pounds of stone.  I found it difficult not to be distracted by the swirling oranges and greens and blues and whites of the onyx and marble, but alas those are unsuitable for kitchens, and so we made our way to the granite slabs. Granite comes in browns, greens, blues, blacks, ivories and golds.  Most fascinating are the figured granites; some resemble abstract paintings.

I was particularly taken by those, perhaps because of my fondness for Kandinsky. 

But, alas, our L-shaped kitchen would not accommodate two seductively figured granite slabs in an aesthetically pleasing fashion.  So I chose, against only minor protests from the engineer, a more uniform deep green with flakes of shimmering silver, gold and tiny spots of reddish-brown. It's called verde butterly:

Soothing, shining flecks of silvery-green ancient volcano spew. Yes! I imagine my countertop was formed on Pangaea, trod on by diplodocus, then submerged in a primeval sea surrounded by jagged-toothed marine creatures with hideous babies bigger than my garage!  

I am really loving my new kitchen so far, but its most endearing feature, the pantry, is not yet usable.  The pantry is home to a stock that any survivalist would envy.  Bottled water, pasta, olives, three types of oil, marinated artichoke hearts, dried peppers, fenugreek, packing tape, homemade bamboo tomato stakes, bubble wrap, twine, aspirin, bandages, holiday decor, my mother's punch bowl, David's mother's turkey roaster, the trash bin and recyclables repose there in harmony.  

I have tried. Despite my (deserved) reputation for not being very handy about the house, I stripped the pantry shelves of the nasty gumminess left by years of shelf paper glue.  In August.  Now it's November, and finally the pantry is being painted. Why? Because the poor engineer just couldn't help himself. 

The old pantry shelves were supported by 1 x 2 strips extending out from the shelves along the wall to the next stud, 12 inches away.  Because no decent carpenter (i.e., his father) would allow that stud's shameful absence to be thus revealed, the engineer had to rebuild the shelves to withstand the next attack by a phalanx of soulless winged serpents with argon laser beam eyes.  Which prompted a conversation:

Me: "But no one ever goes in here except us."

Him: "We will sell this place someday, you know."

Me: "We bought it this way."

And so on. If the love of my life, David, were not a perfectionist, I'd let our finances, home maintenance and just about every other thing fall to the ground in pieces. If I weren't a dreamer, the helpless engineer would have no art, little music, no really good cooking, no family contact, insufficient laughter and too few friends. 

As I said, we are a perfect match.

And just for the record, in the next big Pacific Northwest earthquake, it won't be our can of olives hitting the floor.