A candy-colored clown threw up on my walls.

Our walls are painted. It took us a few days to deal with it. It’s like a pastel-colored unicorn vomited a dollhouse all over the inside of our house while singing nursery rhymes. I think we saw them for the first time on Wednesday last week. We immediately hated the colors. H-A-T-E. Close to tears, I called my mother. The woman who has to buy a new house when she’s had her fill of painting the walls in any current house (at least three paint changes per room) offered to come fix the dilemma. Could my mother be a saint? Yes—she’s obviously the Saint of Paint. To increase my claim that the woman is a saint, her offer to repaint a few rooms is an offer to come to Birmingham from Florida after her Portugal trip and two weeks before her trip to Egypt (all with dad in tow to be a disciple on her Saint Paint pilgrimage). Clearly, this woman can help resolve the greater issues of interior design world peace in the Middle East that pertain to paint colors. Send my mom! She’ll repaint until there is no more war. And all you have to do is hold the ladder.

It was a fifty-fifty kind of day. See, while the wall colors tore out my heart and stomped them into the concrete slab that is our foundation, the kitchen offered us new life. We were reborn when we stepped into the dark, dramatic, daring kitchen we created. Mr. Husband and I were speechless. That’s how incredible was the effect. But the candy-colored walls still glared at us. We tried only to gaze upon the backsplash as she pulled the cabinets to grand cherry life. We tried to imagine the Uba Tuba without her pile of flour dust that looks like a baker went mad in our unfinished kitchen. We tried to ignore the hard pill to swallow with the wall color, but she snuck into the top of the kitchen and fouled our cabinets. How dare this paint be everywhere! We’ve never been so quiet walking through the house as we are every time we visit since the paint arrived and tried to ruin our dream. It’s like we have this sinking feeling. Our wall-color dreams have been stolen and are up for sale at the circus.

And we picked it out. We did it. There is no one to blame but Mr. Husband and Mrs. Wife. Those stupid little paint strips with their flash of hopeful color that mislead one. Damn you paint strips the size of a fingernail! Damn you and your fingernail dream of brilliance! The one major issue that Mr. Husband has been a stickler on from day one is “no yellow.” None. He hates yellow. I kind of share his dislike but can see it for a child’s bedroom. I guess. Maybe. Someday. But he abhors yellow. And now it seems that yellow may be the death of us. She surrounds us with her laughter. Look how she mocks us in my sunroom as she clashes with the sage in the living room. Every time I look at the contrast and see the clash, I imagine a clown getting into a drunk fight at the circus. But, like, not the night circus but the day circus. The day circus where the performers don’t really care and the animals are all asleep. Yes, there are definitely drunken day clowns lurking within our candy-colored walls.

And I’ve not even taken you to the library, yet. Our dream room. The room we’ve planned and designed so that it has the upper porch entry and front-of the house appeal. The room where we took out one of the two closets not simply to screw the next owners but also to provide a better space for books. This room is to be our haven. Our sanctuary. The place that will house our two computers and our passions: work and research. This room must be perfect. And we knew the perfect color because my best friend from grad school, Bhavesh, has it on his walls: "True Red" by Sherwin Williams. But when it came time to select the red for our most important room walls, Mr. Husband decided he was going to flex his style. Yes, the man who cannot dress himself felt he was up for the challenge. I gritted my teeth and sat back. He is important. Mr. Husband deserves a say. He chose “Showstopper Red.” This red is two color strips away from the darker “True Red.” But he persuaded me by throwing up the jazz hands: Showstopper! I’m a sucker for jazz hands. And I’m a sucker for Mr. Husband. Our carnival red walls are the first walls that may Paint Saint mother will repaint.

We will cope. We will continue to plan. Paint is not the end of the world … especially when you have mother like mine with a father who is willing to help. I’m going to have to write the Vatican after this miracle. For now, Mr. Husband and I think of the kitchen. Our awesome kitchen. We will get through this together. Seriously, though, the paint drama nearly killed us. Not everyone is so lucky as to have my mother who will save us from certain wall color hell through her benevolent acts of heavenly paint kindness.