Pompeii Red

Sitting at the breakfast table the other morning, my husband out of the blue said, "I want to paint the wall over the fireplace."

Oh, no, here we go again, I sighed . . . only to myself, I wouldn't want to offend the guy. It's just that every so often he gets this urge to paint something. My kitchen now has blue and yellow walls. He convinced his company to paint their interiors green and orange.

Not that he doesn't have a great sense of style and color. It's just that I don't have "the vision thing." I can never imagine what something is going to look like if you change it. I like things just the way they are, thank you very much. If it's not broken, why fix it? And so on. 

So, I have learned to close my eyes and make the leap of faith. If he thinks it'll be great, it'll probably be great, so I let him paint. The only thing I have learned to put my foot down on is the choice of color. The blue and yellow kitchen was my last act of total blind faith. Live and learn.

He magnanimously said, "You chose the color. If you're happy, I'm happy." Such a sweet guy. So, what color do I want? Hard to say, when I really kind of like the wall white, just the way it was . . .

And then it hit me, Pompeii Red, the perfect color to complement our red and brown sofas and red-brown Oriental carpet. Decision made, the man dashed off to the hardware store and immediately came back with a 

can of paint labelled "Pompeii Red." 

Perfect!

Until he started painting . . .

Pompeii brown maybe . . .

That is so not red, it's brown, plain old brown to my eyes.

Opinions differ on what shade Pompeii Red actually is. Check out the variety here.

And so began a day-long paint-mixing experiment. What color would we get if we added a bit of red? Or white? A touch of yellow?

Still too dark! I wanted a bright, luminous color, not a dead, flat color.

Finally, we found the perfect blend.

The maestro at work.

Well? What do you think? Does it work?

Does it say Pompeii Red to you?

Too much of a good thing is never enough when my husband is painting, so we got a bonus accent wall panel, too.

Iron Woman

What would you choose to do on a day when the temperatures are soaring up to 104° with 85% humidity? Lying in a bathtub filled with ice cubes comes to mind. Relaxing on a Roman-style couch while your slaves fan you and feed you chilled grapes might be nice.

But no, I have to iron.

I know, I know, you're going to ask me "why bother?" You'll say "put it off for another day" or even "don't do it at all." I hear you. 

It just doesn't work that way in this corner of southern Italy. Going around with wrinkly clothes is a guarantee of becoming a social pariah here. Sort of the southern Italian equivalent of being a total loser who doesn't care about . . . their appearance . . . gasp!

A Puglian "don't"

Appearances are super important in this conservative, provincial city. People who have money happily throw it away on designer clothes. People who don't have money, spend too much of their limited resources on the best possible clothes they can afford. And when you walk out of the house you have to be ready: clean, pressed, perfect hair and makeup . . . ready to be scrutinized, judged and commented on by every single person you pass on the street.

Who cares? Well, that's easy for you to say. I personally, don't really care about looking perfectly put together every time I go to the supermarket. But, my personal presentation reflects on my husband and my sons in this little fishbowl society. And I do care about not making life more complicated for them, so I make the effort to iron.

Send me cooling thoughts, please!