Sounds like I found an antique tapestry or some well preserved old wallpaper, but no, I’m talking about paint. Got home from the stone house in time for a board meeting of a charitable organization I’m on –because, despite my circumstances, vestiges remain of a middle class life. Lowes was closed by the time that was over. I couldn’t get ceiling tiles so I rooted around in the paint room in my basement for latex semigloss in some color other than white to paint the bathroom at that student ghetto place. Other than the bathroom all the walls in that place are wood paneling, next to which anything looks better than white. And I want semigloss so it’s easier to clean. The contractor who installed that new bathroom a couple of years ago painted it a nice mustard color; if the store was open I’d get something like that.

The storeroom had several partial cans of dark brown and one never opened can of the trim paint I used in my bedroom here at the brick house around 1987. Glidden off-the-shelf “peach chiffon” with a rusted lid and a price sticker for $11.99. Peach chiffon is more like baby doll flesh and a color I never really liked in my room. It’s been there for 26 years. Pretty sure I won’t be needing this can for any touchups. If I ever paint that room again I’m going with a new color.

I sucked off the rust dust with the shop vac and pried open the lid. It was separated, for sure, but stirred up smoothly — unlike some Walmart paint I bought two weeks ago that was unstirrable and had to be strained. Twenty-six years on the basement floor, never opened but never frozen or overheated. I’m off to doll-flesh that bathroom.