Mad Skillz

My mother is redoing our kitchen in a color scheme similar to this:



As we've been getting ready to paint, I've noticed something odd. Every now and again she asks my opinion about the decor. She listens to me very carefully, acts like what I'm saying is extremely important, and then completely ignores every word of it.

It's like she doesn't think I'm good at interior decorating or something. That is just not true! I've made furniture out of snow. At age four, I drew that amazing colored pencil sketch of the Little Mermaid on that wall in our old house. Only a few years ago I redid my entire room in a white-and-blue zodiac theme that I've only ever seen replicated in an occult shop and cafe. Plus there are, like, seventy-five pins on my "Let's Decorate" Pinterest board! If I don't have mad decorating skillz, I don't know who does.

The only real assistance I'm allowed to give is priming. Everybody primes. Even Baby Brother.

Quick! Think of something short. Whatever you thought of, there's approximately a sixty-nine point twenty-four percent chance that Baby Brother is shorter than that thing. He is roughly the size of a hobbit or a medium-sized shrubbery. The priming brush is taller than he is. I'm not even sure how he picks it up without falling over.

Today when we were about halfway done with the priming Mom suddenly exclaimed, "Oh no! We only have primer and paint samples! We don't have the paint! How are we going to paint the walls without it? Awkward Mormon Girl (not my actual name), go tell Little Sister to come get her paint."

She said all of this in one breath, and to the casual listener, it may sound fairly straightforward. But I have lived with my mother for many years, and I knew that while she was talking about paint at first, in the last sentence this was not the case. The last sentence was spoken in a dialect I call Momish, and it was really supposed to say, "Go tell Little Sister to come get her dinner."

"Little Sister (not her actual name either), come get dinner!" I called. Then, because I couldn't resist, "Or there's paint samples, if you prefer."

"Dinner!" Mom said belatedly, sounding annoyed. "I meant dinner."

"We can't have dinner! We don't have any paint to eat," said Baby Brother, and he and I sniggered.

I think it's moments like this when our mother questions her life choice to bring six obnoxious children into the world.

Anyways, Mom, if you see this, don't worry. I've come to terms with the fact that you don't appreciate my skillz. Someday, someone out there will, and when I redecorate their entire family room to look like the inside of a tree and put a disco ball in the bathroom, they will not only appreciate it, they will rejoice.

(News Flash: Disco ball bathrooms are apparently an actual thing.



Who knew? I did. Because I have skillz.)