At a party recently, I bumped into someone I haven’t seen in a long time.

“What have you been up to?” I asked.

“We’ve been SO busy,” she said in an exasperated voice, “We’ve been doing a lot of painting.”

Now, I know this woman. I know there’s no way in HELL she’s been doing ANY painting. What she meant when she said “We’ve been doing a lot of painting,” is that she’s hired a painter, and it’s a huge inconvenience for her to be “stuck” in the house while the painting team actually does the painting. Not to mention the complete and total mess she’s probably living in right now.

But I asked her anyway, and sure enough, she looked at me like I was crazy, and said, “Of course I hired a painter.”

Several years ago, I decided we needed to have our basement repainted. I wanted a new color. I mentioned this to Jon, and said I would call the painter to get an estimate.

“I think I can do it myself,” Jon said.

“I’ll just call the painter,” I insisted, but Jon wouldn’t budge. “It will be fun, and I want to do it.”

“Isn’t that wonderful,” I said. Sarcastically, of course. Because I knew it would not be wonderful.

Jon went to the store, bough a huge quantify of painting supplies, and proceeded to empty everything out of the room I wanted painted. For some reason, a lot of the items ended up on top of my treadmill. He also taped off the room with that blue painters tape, and then said, “That’s it for this weekend, I’ll start again next weekend.”

Seriously?

“How can I exercise in here with all this mess? Especially with my treadmill covered up with stuff?”

“I guess you’ll just have to go outside for a week.”

It was winter, cold, and there was no way I was going to exercise outside.

A few days went by, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I called the painter, who came with his team, and in a day the job was completed. Finished. All cleaned up, including my treadmill. When Jon came home from work that night, and saw what I’d done, he was furious.

“I was taking care of it,” he said.

“I wanted to use my treadmill,” I said, “Plus, think of all the time I just saved you.”

He wasn’t amused.

At all.

Looking back, I probably should have left it alone. It wouldn’t have been a big deal, and the painting would have gotten done eventually. But, who wants a painting project that lingers? Not this girl. As for my friend, I had to laugh, because I would have said the same thing.

Find meaning each day,

Dara