for nothing.

My parents, they live all the way upstairs, on the second floor of this house.

And I live in the basement.

You know, among the dogs, severed hands, and angry aliens with stumps on the ends of their arms.

But I have a bathroom down here. Something to which I affectionately refer to as mine.

Only my pop, he likes to sneak all the way down here and use it sometimes. Even though he has a perfectly fine bathroom on his floor. It even has a toilet and everything. I know he comes down here, though, because every once in a while I will find the toilet seat left up. And believe me, I didn’t leave it that way.

One time I reminded him of this–that he has his own bathroom–I was joking anyway, though. Mostly. To which he replied that this bathroom isn’t mine. And he was joking too. Mostly.

But the thing is, he’s right.

And it’s not that I don’t have a bathroom at all. I do. I actually have two, in fact. One is orange. A brilliant, vibrant orange that makes you think of fall if fall were to use photoshop.

I was so proud of that color and the courage it took for me to use it. Cause I even still used it after my pop and sister assured me that it was hideous. That the seventies called and asked for their color back. But what it did to that little bathroom was something like magic. And then when my pop and sister saw the transformation, they agreed. And suddenly the seventies was no longer leaving me messages.

And there is the other bathroom too.

The one that’s a nice sage green with bright yellow trim. And how I made it a project. How I’d put on my huge, paint-splattered overalls that could fit a body weighing three times my weight and go to Shinn’s, my favorite paint store. And eventually they knew me in there. And I can’t say for sure, but they probably wondered if the tallish skinny girl ever wore anything other than those overalls and goodness, but is she really asking for more Benjamin Moore paint?

Because I was.

Just about every week.

Sometimes twice a week.

And it wasn’t just paint I was asking for, either. There was the time I bought that real live sponge–the one that came from the ocean at some point–because I was seized with the idea of sponge painting my bathroom.

And there was the time that I decided the white ceiling wasn’t quite white enough, not for this perfectionist. So I bought white paint and then got to it. But what I didn’t think I’d do is somehow manage to poor most of the contents all over my face and hair so that I ended up looking like the world’s sloppiest and grumpiest mime. And there I was frustrated but you can’t stand there, painted by accident, feeling just frustrated for too long. So I gave in and laughed and then when I was done laughing I jumped in the shower and watched as all the paint poured off of my face and hair and down the drain and reveled in the way it happened so easily after all.

And well, this is when I am gonna tell you a little story and you might wonder why because you’ll think what in the world does this have to do with the color of her bathrooms?, but bear with me please…Once last year when I was with Latshaw-WEST, we all got ready, piled in cars, and took a trip to the Santa Monica ice rink. And dearest Ollie, my fiercely loyal little nephew who is passionate about life and has not once, but twice now, woken me in the night with some midnight kisses, he was among the bunch.

But then something happened and for a sad few minutes the prognosis did not look so good. Jason and Darby made the executive decision to turn back and not go ice skating after all and once Ollie heard this, he fell apart just a little.

And by just a little I mean, emphatically proclaimed for all of California to hear:

You mean I did all this for nothing?!?!?!?

When pressed as to what, exactly, all this meant, he brought up the fact that he had changed out of his pajamas and put on shoes, not to mention trekked from his house to the car and then put on a seat belt, but really, all of that is relative. The point is that he was quite upset that the fruits of his labor had seemingly come to a big fat zero as far as returns.

And I guess my point is that when I think about those bathrooms–and not just the bathrooms, but you know, when I think about all of it, really–I can just hear myself thinking nice and loud, YOU MEAN I DID ALL THIS FOR NOTHING?!?!

Because eventually somebody else will have those bathrooms and to them the orange might be a nuisance because at the end of the day it’s still orange and the sponge paint might be too crafty, too do-it-yourself when they didn’t even do-it-themselves, and well, to me, it wasn’t just colors and ideas,  it was love.

It was all the hard work of making a home.

For us.

And actually, now that I think about it, YOU MEAN I DID ALL THIS FOR NOTHING?!?! isn’t exactly the worst thing that I’ve thought.

So, yeah.