What, just what is puce? Is puce a color? Yes puce is a color. What else could puce be? The word puce just popped into my head as I was thinking about painting stuff. It’s one of those words that just come and go without me really ever learning about it. OK without me wanting to learn about it. I like to learn but I have limited time and space to learn more so I have begun to pick and choose what I want to spend time on. But puce? Do I want to use a spare brain cell to learn of puce? Apparently so because the word would not leave my pea pickin’ brain until I checked it out. Seems that puce is a dark red. Or a purple brown. Or a brownish purple. Maybe it might be a dark reddish brown. You know, puce. I love color. I spent a long time with a guy who would have been happy as a clam in mud if we would have painted all the rooms inside our home a fine black. Outside too. Yes black. He painted the hundreds of trailers he built black. He built a 1923 Model T and yes, just like Henry Ford he said he would make it any color I wanted, as long as it was black. On the inside he was very colorful indeed. But he liked black! I am going to put on a new roof, well I am going to have a new roof put on. Ladders and I? Not a good match much more than cleaning the 30 feet of rain gutter I clean once a year — maybe. In trying to decide about this new roof it was decided I should go with a metal roof. I am excited about it. At first it seemed to be a step I didn’t want to take. I’ve lived in a few trailers with metal roofs throughout my years. I was not wanting to re-live some of those roof rattling days in this stick build house. But! Yes, a wind rattling “but.” I have been told the roof I will be getting will be quiet and keep me safe and soundless for a long time. So, I’m moving forward with a new metal roof. The cool thing about a metal roof? Well for me the cool thing was picking a color. Oh, be still my heart. COLOR! I could have a red, perhaps a puce roof. The colors are many and the choice is mine. So, I took a walk about my five acres and drove around my sparse but neighborly miles of neighborhood to see what I could see, in the roof department. I settled on hunter green. A choice that would be colorful, but match the gray of my home and the black of the trim. Yes. Green. Dark hunter green. All green and colorful. There’s something within all of us that gnaws as we go about making life decisions. I not only heard that gnawing, but actually felt it too. I knew green was a flitting decision. I knew green would not be the final decision. But for a moment in time I loved the idea of the new roof being a colorful thing to see. I tried sleeping on it. Next I asked for opinions from people in my trusted circle of family and friends. I have come to ask friends, when I ask for an opinion, tell me the unabridged opinion. When I first became a widow I was handled with kid gloves and opinions were handed to me like they were covered with egg shells. Oh egg shell white! What a blah color. Moving on. I asked for votes of encouragement about my green roof. I wasn’t at all surprised that the unanimous decision of the color I should go with is, you guessed it, black! Yes black. The color the roof is now. An easy black. The color of the shingles, that have been up there for low these 30-plus years, are now. Black. Black. Black. The color you know who chose when we built this house. Black. Yes the color of the day, back in the day, was black. My new roof is going to be black and it’ll be black for the next guy who will someday be the owner of this house. I really am good with it. If it’s not broken don’t fix it right? The final decision was made. The order for the metal is placed? I tried to visualize the green. The more I look the more I feel all will be right with the roof being black. Now, as they say in the movies, “Fade to black!” Trina Machacek lives in Eureka. Her book They Call Me Weener is available on Amazon.com or email her at itybytrina@yahoo.com to find out how to get a signed copy.
