So guess who spent four hours yesterday afternoon repainting her kitchen because she suddenly abhorred the blue walls she'd painted last summer?

Yes, Debra.

And guess whose back is all stiff and weird this morning after spending four hours painting the blue walls she'd painted last summer?

Yep, Debra again. Sigh. Used to be when I was a kid of 40 I could paint walls for 6 or 8 hours and awaken the next morning with a back all perfectly aligned. Ah, I remember those days fondly.

But at least I love the new green of our walls (I mixed the paint myself with two cans of all-wrong green and some black). It astounds me how you can wake up to a kitchen of awful blue one morning, and then to a green kitchen you love, the next.

And the Christmas miracle of it all? Now I look at our repulsive 1970's orange counter tops and they appear as though we meant to use them in our kitchen. Wild, huh? Gone is the urge to rip them out with my tiny bare hands.

There'll be more pictures later. Three walls still require touch-ups and since I even painted our (way too few) cupboards, they need a second coat.

One final note for my fellow homemakers out there: Remember, there's more than one way to 'make money.' By my painting our kitchen myself, it's as though I saved hundreds of dollars... and since a penny saved is a penny earned (as they say), it's rather like I made those hundreds of dollars. The same for the bazillion meals we all cook ourselves--just think of all those restaurant dollars we've saved. And the numberless loads of laundry loads we wash rather than taking them to a laundromat or laundry service... And so the list goes on and on.

So, all you happy homemakers, remember that, ok? Most likely you're making thousands of dollars every year. Boggles the mind, right?

****

P.S. The green on our kitchen walls is darker than it appears above.