A green living room

A week ago we decided to paint the living room.  

Although it didn't really need to be painted, as a result of our recent disasters with roof rats and their fondness for chewing through out plumbing system,  we had to make some repairs to the house.  Since it was somewhat disheartening to spend money on repairing rooms that "but for" the disruptions of vermin would not need repair.   In order to mitigate the upset it was concluded the living room could stand a freshening.

Typically, and by that I mean 99% of the time, I leave all home design choices to Gioconda, yet for some reason this time she asked me and I made the mistake of expressing an opinion.

In fairness, the little swatch of "parsley" didn't look like a light signal, yet when put on the walls, it looked very...very...very...green.

Perhaps if we lived in South Beach the color would have been acceptable.  We did make efforts to talk ourselves into it for about an hour. Gioconda bought curtains to try and calm down the room, yet in the end there was no way around it.  The room was repainted.

Repainting the living room cost a little more money, yet in the end it was a problem easily remedied.

So I started thinking about all the little and big things I would like to "repaint" in my life.   Here is my list so far;

1. Keeping pigs as pets.  They are ungrateful, completely preoccupied with food, have terrible manners, and although have given me some helpful advise on handicapping horse races,  they are insensitive to my needs and rude to our guests.

2.  Providing Pinnter with a bow and arrow.  He said he was training for the Olympics, yet the other day he made the chicken put an apple on her head for him to shoot it off.  In retrospect I should have known he could not be trusted with a weapon he could use against the other animals.

3.  Getting every tattoo I have.   At what point did having "Elvis Lives" scrawled on my right butt cheek by a guy named Chet (who I am certain had done time) - at the Des Moines fair grounds- seem like a prudent idea?  

4.  Giving up on my dream to be a shrimp boat captain.

5. Renting the roof to rats.

So there are the do-overs...so far.

Gioconda's Diet

Gioconda has been threatening since December that once the babies were born she would be going on a diet.

Today that threat was realized when the Fed Ex guy delivered a package labeled perishable.

Inside the box, packed in ice were 15 little meals in plastic boxes, two smashed bran muffins, a corn tortilla, one square of dark chocolate and a slice of cheese.

This is her meals for the next week.  I find this whole thing very upsetting. 

When I was a kid airlines always provided meals on flights more than 2 hours.  Granted the food was typically pretty terrible ( grill marks on the chicken- ok - how does that happen on a plane?), yet recently when I took a trip and I was so hungry I thought about eating my own head,  I considered those little meals with fondness.

Clearly, the airline food industry has made a segway into the diet food market.  Gioconda's little meals look and smell exactly like that airplane food I ingested in the late 70's early 80's.  I don't know if it tastes the same, as I didn't want to take a bite, which would amount to 1/3 of her meal.

What is amazing to me is her tolerance level for discomfort.

If I had to go through what she went through with fertility treatments I would be institutionalized.  Last week I had a tag on my shirt stabbing me, and I had to take an Advil.

She has had five c-sections- FIVE.  After merely being in the room with her when she had it I would never- and I mean NEVER go through it again - and by going through it I mean I would never even be in the same ROOM as a person having a c-section.  

So, the airplane "diet"  food is completely acceptable to her.

Sometimes she will see an apartment above a business- and I mean, this might be a dingy little hobble, above a smoke shop- or Chinese fast food restaurant - and she'll say-

" I wouldn't mind living there."

It makes me completely insane.  

We ate lunch together today.  She had mixed vegetables, (one mini carrot, a stalk of broccoli, a scintilla of red pepper) and a piece of chicken the size Camille's palm.  I had a chicken burrito, fries and a coke- not a diet coke- a regular coke.

But just watching her eat this food fills me with so many horrible emotions I could barely enjoy my high caloric meal.

I imagine her eating this food in her one room apartment above a nail salon, and she is still happy...