Double Home Re-Decorators

Cathy and I had a meeting at her house to read a final version of our book. We sat at her kitchen table and she apologized for a yogurt smear on the wall behind her. I looked at her like, "Are you kidding? This is me you are talking to. I wrote the book on twins with you." I would have been more surprised to not see any signs of her four boys on the wall right behind where they eat several meals a day. In my home, there are three blatant reminders of our twins on our walls. The first is a dime-size white chip on our chocolate painted family room wall (mind you, just painted about 6 months ago). One of the twins did that while chasing the other with a wooden spoon while I was cooking at the stove about 8 feet away. The white mark is only 5 inches above the back of the sofa, so it's low enough that we can't hang a picture on top of it because the twins will surely knock the frame off the wall at some point. The second is a black smear of shoe polish on the pale aqua walls in my bedroom. Both twins deny that one, but I have my suspicions that it is my son because I have seen him do that in my bedroom about a year ago with brown shoe polish. That's what my husband gets for trying to save a few bucks and shine his own shoes. The third isn't actually on a wall but on our marble kitchen island counter top and on one of the cabinets below. The marks are little dried globs of light purple metallic nailpolish. My little girl is definitely to blame for that one. It's funny to think that in the home furnishing business furniture is sold in finishes like "distressed" "weathered" and "antiqued." I have a new category or the furniture biz: "twinned."