From My Window

It’s midwinter, February to be exact, four minutes after 7am and I’ve just woken up.  Before hopping out of bed, I had a stretch with Max, my rescue dog.  This is a daily ritual according to him, but now it’s time to get onto my writing “assignment.”

The window next to my bed is the one in the house most-neglected as far as being viewed from.  There is a small air conditioner in the lower half, and much like many relationships gone bad, it tends to be ignored except when you absolutely need it.  It’s always there, sort of in the background, but taking up space.

Looking out of the window, beyond the mini-blinds, everything looks grey – after all it IS winter.  The roof over the garage connected to my house is grey.  Next door, the potato barn, converted into an office/home, is grey.  The trees growing wildly on the property in between currently have no leaves and are… wait for it… grey.  The road is grey, the house further down the road is grey.  The morning sky is NOT grey today!  The sun has arrived!

I digress, but I realize from my art background that there is not just ONE shade of grey, and certainly I’m seeing variations of grey out of my window.  Being newly aware of how much grey I was seeing out of my window due to this assignment, I decided to Google “Shades of Grey.” No, I don’t need information on the movie “50 Shades of Grey”… thank you very much.  But, I did find that the paint company Behr created a catchy list of THEIR particular “50 Shades of Grey.” Nice marketing!

Flannel Gray, Dark Pewter, Natural Gray, Tin Foil….  And then the names became something I didn’t recognize from the largest box of Crayola’s colored pencils.  Moonquake, Liquid Mercury, Digital, Zero Gravity, PAPARAZZI FLASH??? 

I look out my window again with a long pause. I see dark grey, medium grey, greenish grey, light almost-white grey, bluish grey.  Just take my word for it… there was A LOT of grey out there, ok?  

I also noticed something else.  Formerly known as DUST, I will now be cleaning the “SILVER SHADOW” from my mini-blinds.  That sounds SO much better, doesn’t it?

Thank you, Behr Paints!