I have had a huge decision to make over the past couple of months. I have agonized over it. My thoughts have swung from one extreme to the other, and I have been completely unable to make up my mind.
In David’s world of board gaming, that is called AP – analysis paralysis. I’ve got a bad case of it. This is nothing new; I have had trouble with decision making all my life. My dad, as I think I have mentioned before, says I am good at aiming but I rarely shoot.
This time, though, I have to make a choice, and I have to make it NOW.
It’s time to get the house painted, the painter is ready to pull the trigger, and I have to choose a color.
I know, I know – this doesn’t seem like a life-or-death decision. It’s not. I do know that. But it is a decision I will have to live with for the next 8-to-10 years… and it’s a decision that is going to cost me thousands of dollars, so I won’t be able to change my mind and go with something else.
Part of my problem is that I don’t believe that the color samples I see will actually look the same on our behemoth of a house in broad daylight, nor do I believe that the computer simulations I’ve done – using photos of our actual house – are anywhere near accurate representations, either. What if I choose a green and it turns out to look like the home of a leprechaun? What if the lovely bluish-grey turns out to be robin’s egg blue? Will mine be the house that others point to and wonder what the owners were thinking, taking that torch from the green-and-orange house down the street?
To add to the madness, every time David and I look at paint chips, we are so enamored with the names that the colors hardly seem to matter. We could paint our house Midnight Oil? Done! Or Gargoyle with Dragon’s Breath trim? Think of how much the board gamers would like that! Honestly, though, most of the names seem pretty useless. One of the front-runners on the sample chips is Camas with Skagway trim and Moclips as an accent. Those names really paint a picture in your mind, but a picture of what? Seriously… what?
People have told me to just find a house we like and ask what color it is. This is not as easy as it sounds. The three of us have driven around looking at paint combinations, and not only do we not agree on what we like, at times we can’t even agree on what color a house is. I’ll think it’s green, David will think it is brown, and Quinland will think we can’t choose it anyway because it “looks like poop.”
Oh, well. The painters want to get started this week, and they need to order the paint. I guess I might as well just set one of the sample brochures down, close my eyes, and point. What will it be? Ravalli with Entiat? Nampa with Ochoco? Izee with Targhee? I think as long as I miss the one that has combined Hanford with Potholes, we should be safe. That’s a color scheme with some potential bad karma, right there.
Have you ever had to choose a house color? Or any paint, for that matter? How did you decide? (And who makes up these names? I must know.)