2-28-09 Painting party

After a painstakingly long search, Mr. and Mrs. S FINALLY settled on paint colors. For weeks they had brought home paint chips and compared them to the color of their future cabinets. One day while they were at work, I thought I would lend them a hand and help them pick out a color. I brought all the chips into the living room, set them on the floor, and stared...and stared...and stared. They all looked the same! I swear they had 20 paint chips with the exact same color but different names. I suddenly flashed back to sixth grade in my Gnomistan history class and it all made sense. You see my loyal readers, Gnomistan was not always the enlightened and stable country it is today. In fact, we were quite reactionary when it came to certain issues. 319 years ago Gnomistan went through what you might call “the dark ages.” The government felt threatened by the country's flourishing water color painting movement so they cracked down on their citizens. Now the details are kind of sketchy from that period but most historians believe that government closed down all the art studios, broke and banned every paint brush smaller than two inches wide, and most horrifically, banned bright colors. They came out with the “official” color pallet for the country that consisted of only 38 colors. It was even worse than your modern home owners association's! The color pallet wasn't even well thought-out. Seven of the 38 colors were outside the range of a Gnome's eye sight and 4 of them were versions of clear! Over time our eyes evolved to only be able to see those 38 shades. Scientists are working on the problem but the cure is thought to be years away. But since we can only see a small part of the color spectrum, we gnomes developed a keen sense of discerning the minute differences between what to others would appear as virtually the same color. I called upon this evolutionary advantage to pick the paint colors for the kitchen, laundry room and powder room. At least, that's what I told Mr. and Mrs. S when they returned from work. Don't tell them but I really just picked the colors with the prettiest names.

So with the colors picked, the paint purchased, and the rollers at the ready, we began the great painting adventure. Mr. S's mother and father came down to join the fun. I, myself, was not going to participate in the painting. I have had a life-long fear of paint brush bristles that stems from an unfortunate art class tickling incident. Now every time I see a paint brush, I break out into a cold sweat and hide under the nearest table. Hence, I was content on being the foregnome on this job as we had more than enough people to help. And what progress they made! They finished all of the priming and the painting of the ceilings.

Don't you look at me...Get back to work!


This roller is WAY to big for me

Nittany Gnome: Protector of the paint