Redecorating

The poets say that in the spring, a young man’s fancy turns to love. The only trouble with this arrangement is that it comes into direct conflict with a young woman’s fancy, which turns to redecorating her entire house the minute winter starts to wane.

Unfortunately, redecorating a home is a harrowing experience, requiring the nerve of a kamikaze pilot, the patience of a head nurse and the resourcefulness of a hostess with a five-pound roast and twelve unexpected dinner guests.

For example, you decide to wallpaper the front hall. This means that you have to have the painters in to paint the woodwork first.

But before you do that, you have to call in the carpenters to make a few minor repairs, like replacing the doorknob your husband removed in a fit of pique the last time the baby locked himself in the bathroom.

The main trouble with redecorating is that it begets redecorating. Newly painted walls make the drapes look tacky; new drapes make the carpets look worn; new carpets make the furniture look shabby, and so on, far into the debt-ridden future.

And the decisions! Every woman know the agony of choosing just the right shade of blue for that back bedroom wall. But how many are aware of the trauma-strewn path to choosing the right wallpaper?

I’ve seen women who chose their husbands on the first date and named their babies before they left the delivery room, hanging blank-eyed with panic over books of wall-paper samples, begging opinions from perfect strangers who wandered in off the street.

Naturally, for all this time and effort, not to mention the emotional scars that will be with you until old age, you get no sympathy from your husband. Complain that you’re exhausted, you simply can’t go on, and the sweet considerate thing will leap to his feet and offer to put the whole redecorating job off for another ten years.

Of course, eventually the job gets done. Suddenly you find yourself eating alone at the table, sans carpenters, painters, paper hangers and your neighbors, who heard you were redecorating and kept coming over to try to hire all the workmen away from you.

At last it’s finished, and you love it! Or maybe you don’t. It doesn’t much matter. In no time at all, it’ll acquire that soiled, crayoned, scruffy look that made you do it all over in the first place.