and now a word from our sponsor (my husband mike)

Linda is updating our son’s room these days, which is about time.

That’s no knock on Linda – she’s been prodding him toward wanting a new room for some time now. The room was very nice and appropriate when he was five or eight…but just the other weekend I bought him a razor. I thought it would be comical to see how he could use the razor on Ernie T. Dog, but he instead used it wisely on his upper lip.

So about then he agreed that his room needed to come up to a 14-year-old boy’s standards, whatever those are.

In my youth, that included pictures of Glynnis O’Connor, Madeline Kahn and Teri Garr, held to my papered walls with multiple strips of yellowing Scotch® tape.

Sexy, isn’t it? Man, I used to be so hip. But I know that at some point, instead of guys hanging out in the basement or playing video games in the back room, he will have friends in his room – NO GIRLS, thank you – and he can’t have primary-color drawings of boats and race cars as his decorations.

The problem for him is that to do the work, Linda has had to move all the necessary furniture into the middle of the room while she spackles and primes and paints the walls. (Suddenly I’m thinking that “Spackle” would be a great name for a dog.)

It also means that he’s been sleeping in a bedroom that smells of paint and whatever is used to refinish furniture, so I feel bad that he’s probably having fume-induced dreams of talking closets or Hula-Hooping light bulbs or an amorous Shirley Booth.

He’ll survive, of course, and the room will be great because Linda is doing it. I never had a room as cool as he soon will have. But hey, I had Charlene Tilton above my dresser. Beat that, pal!