Painting again....

Loving it, real color at last. I started with the butterscotch this time and decided if I get tired of all the color, I will go back to butterscotch and white. It looks good with my roof. For now, I like the 4 color scheme even if the local teens refer to me as the "crazy lady" doing the "wild" paint job on her house. Even my 30 year old son, who lives out of state, heard from his friend that it was "pretty colorful". I told him it was OK, my "grown up" friends like it. Who would have thought that a bunch of teens and twenty-somethings would consider something with a little color "wild"? The generation gap is wider than I thought.


I am of the Woodstock generation. Do you realize that Woodstock took place 40 years ago next week? I wasn't there, I was in Arizona then, getting ready to start college. Back then I would have thought a house painted like mine was "cool" or maybe even that the colors could have been more intense. I know this because when I got my first apartment a year later, I painted every wall and the ceiling, a different color. Color and bold pattern were in. We dressed in it, we painted it on our cars and in our rooms, sometimes we painted it on our faces. We pursued individuality fervently, to the point that we were all alike in our striving to be different. Our life plans did not include conforming to the social norms established by our predecessors, we were going to create a new, brighter world. We protested injustice, we demanded change, we asked for peace, sometimes with violence.

Like everything, I have changed with time. The 40 years since Woodstock has also brought me well into "middle age". My joints tell me about it in the morning and by evening, my feet tell me about it. I wear out quicker, I'm not as strong as I used to be and sometimes I totter when I turn too quickly. Taking risks is now scary more often than it is exciting and I worry more about what will be on TV than who will be "out" tonight. I find that putting a little paint on my house and sitting around with a bunch of dogs makes for a pretty darn exciting weekend. But I still challenge authority sometimes and I try not to conform all the time and I still love color.