Our old kitchen table was covered in microscopic specks of paint. I hadn’t noticed them for months. Yet, when I did, I spent the better part of an afternoon trying to clean them off.

I shared all about this evil afternoon several months back. 

Shortly after reading that Saturday Morning Story my wife confessed: “In my defense: I noticed them and tried to clean them, but they were oil-based paint.”

Well, that’s great.

A detail missing from the previous story was the fact that my artist wife was sitting in her blue, easy chair in the corner of our living room that fateful afternoon. Her chair has a clear view of our kitchen where the table sat. She had a clear view of what was going down having already tried to clean the specks herself.

So, not only were my eyes leaking due to the chlorine-laced, extra-strength cleaner…

And not only was my elbow-grease supply dwindling after an afternoon of scrubbing…

And not only I was discovering my Joker, my Lex Luthor, my Professor Moriarty…

… but it all could have been averted if my loving, my dear, my artist wife spoke up. Just a little bit.

I’m not an artist. Clearly. I wouldn’t know the difference between oil-based paint and the opposite of oil-based paint if the answer was sitting right in front of me. I don’t even know what “the opposite” is. Nor do I care to Google it. (Maybe someday.)

All I know is brute force. And, all I have is a seemingly endless supply of energy with which to spend an afternoon applying that force to oil-based paint.

All I know is brute force. And, all I have is a seemingly endless supply of energy with which to spend an afternoon applying that force to oil-based paint. 

Which leads me to her second confession that day: “Oil-based paint is a pain to clean,” she said long after I’d already learned that lesson. 

Alas, I now have to live with the knowledge that oil-based paint is my arch nemesis. Worse, it was all for naught and completely avoidable.

However, I suppose it was inevitable. The greatest arch nemeses often tend to be close to you. 

Fortunately, she mostly uses acrylic, not oil-based paints. So, a repeat effort with our new kitchen table seems unlikely.

Then again, if she doesn’t use oil-based paint often and our kitchen table is off limits to her art (in theory), how did those specks get there in the first place?

*sigh*

Read It Again