I am married to an indecisive person. Actually, “indecisive” might be the wrong word, because “indecisive” implies that a decision will eventually get made. Maybe “non-decisive”? “Never-ever-decided”?

I am married to a never-ever-decided person. When we moved into our house, Deserae took one look at our yellow living room and said, “Blech. I hate yellow. We are painting this immediately.”

We did not paint it immediately. We did not paint it within a week or a month or a year. But after four years and five months of agonizing over 5,000 shades of gray, I am proud to announce that our living room is now beautiful “Lunar Surface” gray. It was a glorious moment of triumph that lasted for 13 seconds before Deserae said, “Now what do we do about the curtains?”

At least paint only comes in solid colors. Choosing the perfect pattern, style and fabric of curtain could take decades. Things seemed hopeless until Deserae called me from J.C. Penney with great news.

“Great news!”

“Did you find something you like?”

“Funny joke! No. But I just found out that J.C. Penney has an interior designer that will come to your house for free!”

“Yeah, because they want you to buy from them.”

“Yeah, Dustin, that’s fine. I’ll pay extra if someone will just show me which stupid curtains to buy.”

One week later, Jennifer the interior designer rolled into our house with thousands of curtain samples in giant binders.

“I have more in the car if we need them.”

“Do you have any other appointments after this one?”

“No.”

“That’s good.”

Jennifer started by showing Deserae pictures of different styles of curtains.

“These are valances. Do you like valances?”

“No.”

“What about these scarves?”

“No.”

“Cornices?”

“Gross.”

Deserae does not know what she likes, but she has very strong opinions about what she doesn’t. This went on for awhile until:

“Shutters?”

“Nope.”

“That’s it.”

“That’s what?”

“That’s every single thing you can do to a window.”

After looking at everything again, Deserae finally decided she likes plain, old curtains. She “just had to see everything first.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere!” Jennifer said, unaware that we were getting nowhere. “What color were you thinking for the curtains?”

Deserae just stared back like “I thought you were going to tell me that.”

“Well,” Jennifer finally said, “Here are a few options I picked out.” She laid out several different fabrics. “Do you like any of these?”

Deserae did not, but she didn’t tell Jennifer that right away because Jennifer had picked them out and Deserae didn’t want to make her feel bad. So she hemmed and hawed for a few minutes before Jennifer finally realized that no, Deserae did not like any of her samples.

“It’s OK!” Jennifer said, unaware that it was not OK. “Let’s look through this book!”

She plopped one of the fabric family Bibles in front of Deserae and opened it up. Deserae stared sadly at the binder. I recognized her hopeless look as the same one I get whenever I open the hood of a car that’s just stalled.

Jennifer, bless her heart, did not give up hope. She kept flipping through fabric, occasionally removing a piece to hold against the wall.

“What do you think about this one?”

“Hmmm, what do you think about this one, Dustin?”

I’ve long ago learned that it is not my job to tell Deserae what I think in these situations. Rather, I am supposed to take what I know about Deserae, figure out what she would say, and then tell her what she thinks.

“Well it has brown in it. Do you like that?”

“Ohhhhh good point. No I don’t.”

Jennifer kept smiling, but you could tell she was dying a little bit inside.

This went on until we finished the two binders Jennifer had brought inside. Then Jennifer went back out to the car to get another binder. And another binder. Finally, after an hour and a half of holding fabrics against this wall and that wall and next to each other and lots of squinting, Deserae had pretty much made up her mind.

“OK, I think I like this one,” she said. “Do you know if they have this one at Parmatown?”

“Oh no, none of these are in the store,” Jennifer said. “They’re all custom.”

“They’re all what?”

“Custom. We pick out a fabric and get measurements and send them off. In six to eight weeks, I’ll come back with the installers to put them up.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that. Uhhhhh, OK, is custom more expensive?”

“Yes. Much more expensive.”

“So, ballpark for these two windows…”

“$1,500.”

I laughed out loud. Deserae’s face got red and her eyes got ginormous.

“Is that not in the budget?”

“I am so sorry,” Deserae said.

“It’s my fault,” Jennifer said. “I, uh, I should have explained up front.”

“I am so so so so so sorry.”

“It’s OK, I’ll just, uh, I’ll just pack everything up.”

“Let me hel…”

WHUMP!!

That was the sound of Jennifer tripping over a giant book of expensive fabrics and hitting the floor hard.

“I AM SO SO SO SO SO SO SORRY!!!”

Jennifer could not get out of our house fast enough. Unfortunately, she had 200 pounds of fabric to transport, so it took some time. Deserae helped her with the last binder as she shuffled to the car.

“Thank you, drive safe, I’M SO SORRY!”

After Deserae closed the door, we sat in silence for a few seconds.

“Well that was awkward,” I said.

“Yeah. Yeah it was.”

“I don’t think she caught herself at all when she fell.”

“No, she hit the ground pretty hard.”

More silence.

“Well,” Deserae finally said with a hint of a sheepish smile. “At least now I know what I want.”

LIFE LESSON #107

Sometimes to figure out what you want, you’ve got to suck it up, sit down and not get up again until you come to a decision – even if it almost kills you. Or the interior designer.