Paintophobia

That's what I have. An intense and utterly unrealistic fear of colored walls.

In my defense, I have very good reasons for this fear. Fred and I spent many years living in rented houses where we tried our best to make do with other people's butt-ugly color schemes. We did have it written into our lease in our second North Carolina house that "tenant has the right to remove the monkey wallpaper from the fourth bedroom." Yes, monkeys. On bikes. And not cute circus monkeys either. Picture ugly "Planet of the Ape"-style simians riding old-fashioned bikes. :::shudder:::

When we left North Carolina for Hawaii and moved into a house that had all white walls, it was like breathing clean air for the first time. We bought our house in San Antonio and did exercise our ownerly rights to paint the kitchen and re-paint Annabelle's room a slightly less shocking shade of pink. But that was it for us and paint, and our walls in Germany remained pure and untouched.

When we were moving in to this house here at Fort Knox, we were too busy buying furniture and curtains to even think about paint, and I didn't care. I was happy with my white walls. Until the other day.

On Wednesday I went to a baby shower that was hosted by a friend whose house I had never visited. Her house is exactly like my house, except that her house is so beautifully decorated that Martha Stewart would come away feeling like an abject failure. It's one thing when you visit somebody and their house looks so much better than yours, and you can chalk it up to just being a better house. You get to console yourself with the thought that sure, mine would look like that too if I lived there. BUT HER HOUSE AND MY HOUSE ARE THE SAME HOUSE!

So I have decided that if we get word that we are staying here a third year, I am going to try to confront my fear of paint and add a little color to our lives.