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It's silly to say that I hate being sick. I mean, who doesn't hate being sick? Oh, wait... nevermind. Just forget I said that, okay? I've had enough of being laid-up in the past ten days to last me a whole year, as far as I'm concerned. I've got things to do!

For my birthday, B. finally - finally - finished painting my kitchen, and it's given me the urge to clean my entire house top-to-bottom, an activity I started on Monday before my digestive system went AWOL.

Let me tell you about this paint job: From the day we moved into our house in early 1999, we have lived by one solid rule: no colorless rooms. Ever. We started with bright pastels, which isn't nearly as awful as it sounds. Think Fiestaware Three years later, I decided we needed a change. Our pale blue with teal trim living room became a deep jewel-toned aquamarine with bright white trime. The light teal with pale blue trim dining room transformed into a rich eggplant-purple with bright white trim. And my kitchen? It's lemony-yellow walls with deep teal trim were to become a bright, pure red and bright white.

I bought the paint for the kitchen in January, 2003 and we immediately set to work.

Did you know that red is the hardest color to paint because it takes around 80 coats for it to cover anything?

Did you also know that trying to cover deep teal paint with red paint is almost as easy a bleeding enough blood to paint a kitchen red?

After several cabinet doors, which became a quarter of an inch deeper, thanks to the 800 layers of paint, we got frustrated and quit. During this phase of unfinished kitchen moping, we accepted the fact that we were going to have to start all over, this time using a heavy-duty primer in order to make the red work. And to throw another monkey wrench into the plan, I got pregnant.

One weekend that August, when I was around three months pregnant, I went out of town for the weekend. When I returned, I was thrilled to see that half my kitchen had been transformed into red and white goodness. It's lovely, really. Sleek white walls with bright red cabinet doors. I adored it.

That was the last painting that occured in my kitchen. It was like a set of railroad tracks ran through the middle of the room. On one side of the tracks, we have a gorgeous, well-maintained, tasteful room. On the other, ghetto.

A few weeks ago we were at an arts fair and I was wistfully fondling a pair of Allison's potholders, wanting to buy a pair but knowing that the thugs on the ghetto side of the kitchen would just steal them. Then it hit me: I've got a birthday coming up. I'm leaving town and taking Clara Jane with me the weekend before said birthday. B. doesn't have enough to do with his time. "Oh, B.," I called. "I know what I want for my birthday. I want to come home from Peoria and find a newly painted kitchen." For motivation. I bought a pair of potholders. Red and black potholders, which I hung over the stove in the ghetto to remind him.

I came home from Peoria and what did I find? A newly red and white kitchen! And it's gorgeous, I tell you. Gorgeous! Save for one cabinet door and drawer front, who keep balking at this whole "kitchen gentrification" program. They'd like to keep their crack house, thank you very much.

The side of the kitchen that was painted two years ago, the snobby fucking bastards.

The newly gentrified side of the kitchen, with its lone ghetto hold-out in the bottom left corner, just waiting to cut you when you sneak out for a midnight snack.