i stole a walnut once.

my girlfriend and i were shopping with her mom at ralph’s grocery store and on a whim, we decided to each hide an in-shell walnut in our shirt-sleeves and proceed through the check-out line without so much as a second thought. i mean, even to this day, i still can’t pinpoint what on earth possessed us to do our best winona ryder impersonation on the WALNUT display? i didn’t even eat nuts at the time.

and boy oh boy did we get in big trouble. not only did we have to compose hand-written apology letters, we had to go back to the scene of the crime to deliver them in person. i remember shaking like a leaf as i read my composition aloud to the manager, taking full note of the sheer and utter embarrassment and overall terror i felt in that moment and locking it away in my memory banks to recall if ever the desire to double as a kleptomaniac struck my fancy once more.

and aside from maybe accidentally permanently “borrowing” a pen or two from work, i’ve refrained from getting too sticky of fingers since that day.

but when i recently took some paint swatches from home depot to start a collection in hopes of recreating this diy project:

suddenly my mind shot back to visions of walnut-gate[sometime in the mid-90’s] and i immediately got self-conscious about my paint swatch-gathering ways.

and i know, paint swatches are free. gratis. complimentary (like the peanuts). but i’m not sure if snagging, i don’t know, about 50 of them is totally kosher. maybe like a professor dating his student (a la friends episode 6.18) it’s frowned upon and i could risk going to some sort of home depot jail.

and in that moment as i began grabbing at every swatch in the dusty rose and sage green color family, a little voice inside me told me to pace myself. don’t get greedy, shawna, save some for the rest of the patrons.

so maybe i can make peace with my bout of paint swatch kleptomania if i take them over a course of two or three trips to the home improvement warehouse instead of filling my shoulder bag with eight samples of “avocado mist” in one solo trip?

or maybe i just need to get over it and take the darn swatches because that’s what they are there for. how does home depot know that i’m not a terrible decision maker and i need a vast array of paint samples in the same color palette to aid me in deciphering the perfect hue to adorn my bedroom walls with?

precisely.

or MAYBE, they read my blog and know that i’m really just taking them to recreate the diy project shown above.

and if that’s the case, then they’ll totally understand.

six swatches down, only 42 to go!