A manly man shade of pink

The first thing Punkin said when I told her that I painted my bedroom walls pink was "that's MY favorite color!" Well, of course, I was thinking of her all day long when I laid down that paint. I thought, too, of all the dresses and toys and thingamajigs that she has that are pink, or a shade of pink, or variations of purple and pink, and know that somehow she tapped in hard in the decision making for that color. Five hundred miles was a long ways to send a psychic message to her Papa but the connection has been laid down fairly well over the last few weeks. It must be all those daily phone calls she sends my way that influenced my paint selection.

It wasn't really the color choice I had planned on making. I had a wide variety of paint swatches in hand to choose from. I had been leaning on cantalope, or a shade of peach, maybe even something on the other side of the spectrum, in a lighter shade of blue. But the blue, while nice from the old man in the sea perspective, made the room seem too much like a baby boy's room, and with the coming of winter and the possibility of another long season of cold ahead of me here in this house, I didn't want to lay down something that would add an extra layer of chill to that room.

Yeah, I didn't want cool, although that color would be nice on those steaming hot summer nights when the temperatures hit the low nineties. No, warm was the direction where that color had to go. But in the end it could have been anything considering the paint that was on the walls before I started. I was talking to my boy tonight and he was in agreement that he and his brother were only days away from notifying their congressman about that paint before they had to take off to Boise. It was something that bordered on asthetic cruelty, it was that bad. But not bad in a horrible color sense, but bad in that the paint was old and worn and needed freshening up. It had not been touched upon since we bought the house eleven years ago. Someone along the line decided to paint it a shade of vanilla, but laid that light yellow paint over an old school variation of avocado green. Somehow that yellowish tinge just couldn't keep that shade of green down. It was awful, made even moreso while I laid down fresh paint on top of it.

Nothing like a fresh coat of paint to give a room promise. See, all you hyper masculine men out there must be wondering what the hell a manly man like me would be doing painting his room pink. Well, if you really feel you have a need to know just know that the name of the shade is Pink Grandeur. Doesn't that sound pretty swell already? And it isn't a cotton candy pink, or 50's pink, or even Pink Cadillac or Pink Elephant, but a shade of pink that has a bit of peach in it. Think what you'd get if you mixed your "flesh" and "pink" Crayola Crayons together and that's kinda where it's going, but with a hit of orange in it, too, for warmth. But what really makes that color sing, though, are these two old fifties orange lampshades that I picked up a garage sale in Grants Pass years ago. When those lights are lit that shade of Pink Grandeur turns downright wicked.

Okay, well, not really wicked, but you get the idea. So, think warm. Think of the color of your sweetheart's cheeks after a hard walk. Think the opposite of Pacific Northwest winters, think waking up to a room that already has a blush of sunshine in it. Not painted some cool shade of blue, cool like the deep waters of the Sound, but something with a touch of sunrise in it, something with a hint of the coming of the spring. Not a bad thing to see on your walls on a frosty morning come December. So take that, all you hairy chested types that might snicker at my choice. Besides, it's Punkin's favorite color. Anybody want to give me a hard time about that?

Salud!