Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for January 03, 2019

now that the adults have worked it out amongst themselves, next they’ll have to tell their niece

Give Shannon a choice between White, Artic white, Eggshell white …

Puce IS low-key. It’s a dark reddish burgundy brown. Not great for walls, but fine for furniture, windowsills and lintels, or maybe a quilt.

“Pukey” – nice one Toni.

Everybody is out to learn a lesson here.

Bwad already smells like a good dad.

Give her a choice between 3 colors, and make them colors that can be lived with.

Man, they worked really hard for that joke!

What happens next week when Shannon decides she no longer likes puce and orange and wants Toni and Brad to redo the room in black and slime green? Sometimes the lesson a kid needs to learn is that they can’t rule the household. Let her decorate with posters and swappable items.

Nice artistic rendition of the background wall arcing through the three panels.

Prediction: Brad and Toni will never have their own kid until every single solitary poster on this site stops calling him ‘Bwad’. Since that will never happen, there will be no kid.

Toni assumes that it will be ugly. I would bring up a color palette and ask Shannon to pick out puce, just to see if she really knows what color it is. It may turn out to be something different altogether. Possibly something acceptable.

Puce would look horrible on a wall in a child room. Toni and Brad you are the adults give her a choice of colors.

A place of her own—isn’t that at her dad’s apartment?

Paint it in a light color shade of her choice and give her removable wall stick-ons to decorate with. They even come in glow-in-the-dark.

I gave my stepdaughter free reign to choose her bedroom colours. Her choice? Hot pink on 2 walls, lime green on the other 2. Let kids be kids.

Yes Brad kids should have their own place, so should adults, and this early in your marriage you do not need to be arguing about a kid that’s not even yours.

Pukey? Light green, right?

I can see it now. Brad and Toni give Shannon all the freedom in the world to make all the choices she wants to make. Then Shannon has an existential crisis because of the burden of all that freedom.

TJ stirred all this up, strange Toni and Brad have different work schedules most of the time but TJ is always there could he be nailing them both be why he’s always smiling?

Good for Brad! HE’s absolutely right! Shannon would take better care of it if the room was loved by her.

Sometimes, you have to be able to go a step further to show a young one that what you think is good really is. My daughter has always loved gravy of many types. For decades, I have made a “Tuna A La King” that is to kill for. She would not eat it, but she would eat any type of gravy. One time when she was about four or five, I made it, and before she could say anything, I put some on her plate and told her it was “tuna gravy”. It was love at first taste. I got about a year out of that before she learned that it was really Tuna A La King. In a sense, it really is tuna gravy…

Brad and Toni will work this out amicably, unless either one of them decides to call in “resident expert” TJ…

Actually, it’s a rather nice dark color, with white trimming and furnature could be a nice teen girls room….https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puce

Give her a choice of mauve, puce, fuschia, magenta, teal, taupe and cyan.

And here I thought Pukey was Shannon’s choice.

Sure kids should have a place that’s their own. For Shannon, that should be with her dad. Building a room for her in the first place was already going absurdly out of their way to enable Jonah’s bad habit of dumping Shannon on them whenever. I’d be with Toni on this that it should really be more of a guest room, but they’ve already hyped it up for Shannon as being her room, so they kinda shot themselves in the foot on that one.

Go with pastel versions of her colour choices, OR paint it all WHITE and let her choose one “feature wall” for the custom colors.

So, it’s settled: the kid is staying.

As a guy that went through a divorce I have some advice for Brad. Not a good idea to win the battle but lose the war.

Shannon might not even know what color puce is, she just likes saying it because it sounds rude.

Wow – all this fuss and muss (remodeling and decorating a room), for a kid who doesn’t even live there? Hmmm… smells like Greg is laying the groundwork for Toni and Brad to adopt Shannon – which would really suck. I keep hoping she would somehow be written out, the irritating little brat…

It would be a nice accent color if you put a nice, light tan color on the wall… yes, a little 70s and early 80s, but so what? ;-)

Anybody got the pun? “Pu” Key?"

Why let Shannon decide the color at all? It’s high time she learned that she can’t always get what she wants, and this is a good a time as any. These two really need to set some boundaries with her and teach her who the decision-makers in the house actually are. Growing up, I had exactly zero input as to what color my walls would be painted and it wasn’t the end of the world. So stop spoiling her already!

Always, always think of the re-sale value before you paint. Especially when you’re just renting.

she’s a kid, for cryin out loud. Another few hours, and she’ll change her mind to purple and blue.

Re lintel: Stonehenge is a good example of post and lintel construction. That and many structures in Bedrock (twist-twist).

Lemme see if I got this straight.

Toni can’t control the kid. Brad on other other hand, can handle the little stormtrooper 100 times BETTER than Toni EVER could. And on more than one occasion she needed Brad’s help to reign the little tyke IN. BOTH She and Brad have indulged the kid’s every whim, up to and including abandoning plans to move to a bigger house and renovating Frank and Nancy’s Rental, apparently once again without permission from the owners, so the “dear child” can have her own room, away from home.

And now, after all THAT, Toni decides she’s gonna put her foot down over the color of the kid’s room??

SERIOUSLY???

Paint the room whatever kid wants. She ain’t gonna stay in it anyway. The minute you two love monkeys even think about “doing the nasty,” she’s gonna insist on sleeping in “Aunt Toni’s” room.

so toni is agreeing with brad about a child having control ,BUT she doesn’t like the choice.

My office walls are orange and dark reddish burgundy brown leather seats and brown furniture. I’ve received compliments! I betcha Tony’s thinin’ that ugly color … pink! LOL

It’s called an accent wall. Go for it.

Shannon would probably like some kind of zombie wallpaper, the weirder the better.

Brad’s being awfully rational.

“Pukey?” How about Exorcist green?

Tell Shannon the store’s out of puce, and give her two or three other choices that both of you agree on. Then let Shannon pick out a puce bedding set and area rug. The bedding and rug can easily be changed to different colors.

I feel petty , so I am going to say I hope they do, just so she is around more often. too many people here with sticks in their posterior who hate this kid, and some who want to beat her routinely. PATHETIC.

Brad seems to want to escalate this difference of opinion into a spat. I think Toni is showing some aplomp. Especially for a tired person with a hammer near at hand.

But probably this (spat) is merely a set up for what Greg has come up with as a clever compromise.

what I’d do is paint it to look like the other walls, except for a realistic painted-on doorway. That way she can imagine all the other places she could go to on the other side of that door.

Toni, why don’t you see first what color and theme she picks? Then if it’s horrible, try and provide other options. Shannon might only be saying puce because it sounds like “puke.” She might not even know what color it really is. In fact, I’m not sure I really know. And that’s because I’m finding conflicting info on the Web. Some things are saying it’s a reddish purple, but others say it’s this really strange greenish color. And the reddish purple might actually look nice with the orange. But if it’s the greenish? Then she’d look like she was living inside a pumpkin.

Who are the adults here? they should decide

Like the wordplay in Panel 3…

6

Usually, I am a little dismayed at Shannon’s actions and responses…. but in this week…. no. She has simply asked to have her room be orange and puce. From my manner of thinking, I definitely lean towards Brad’s way of thinking in this case, and find it a bit disheartening how negatively Toni is responding.

As the room was (and is) primarily designed to be a bedroom FOR Shannon when she (seemingly frequently) comes over, I think it is wholly appropriate for her to have an opinion on color choices… and her preference SHOULD be given strong consideration…. hell, it is only a gallon or two of paint that is required to change it sometime afterwards.

However, from the comments…. I think Brdshtt has the best idea…. Brad should take Shannon (and Toni if she wants to go) to the paint store and let Shannon look at the array of little paper paint samples…. and tell her to pick the two she likes the best….. as a point for discussion and final decisions…. and then see what she chooses. Brad may need to pick a lighter shade or two of the respective colors (especially in a small room), but IMO, they should allow her to have some significant input.

I got an idea. Let’s go “Bird Box,” here and make this fun for the kid. Give the kid a can of paint with the color of her choice and a brush. Blindfold her, put her in her room and let her have at painting her own room.

OhandtellherifshetakesthatblindfoldoffsomethingsgonnaGETher!

[DUCKS]

My question is: why is Toni reacting in a way that seems so over-the-top in this matter? Is she over-reacting to it all? Has a nerve been struck that we are only now just getting a glimpse of? Is something else going on here with her?

I keep saying I will not scan through other comments before I do my daily little addition, but I keep contradicting myself. These old fogies on this comment blog keep referring to Shannon as a little brat, one deserving of old-fashioned severe discipline, totally in control of her Aunt Toni, none of which is true. Like so much it’s projection upon cartoon characters in the fantasy world of Luannverse. I wonder how many have ever raised children, or it they did forgot how their kids were, and kids are, at the tender ages of 4, 5, 6, 7 etc. If Shannon gets to be a teenager if the strip is still around (many of us might not be) then that will be a more interesting time to characterize her behavior, and more accurate (although teenagers are not fully formed cognitive beings either). Meanwhile the focus here is not really Shannon, but the relationship between Toni and Brad. Also the whole story of that relationship. Shannon is a flash point because of her situation, with a largely absent single father. They are showing how to compromise their different ways of coming to terms with that, Brad being instinctively a loving, nurturing father type (now where could have gotten that from, Frank?) and Toni being a loving, and nurturing but a bit stricter type (maybe from the background she has in Luannverse). Shannon is a developing child, strong-willed, but that is a personality trait that can be developed in a good way with good parental, and/or adult interaction, but the whole thing is really in terms of Toni and Brad. Okay, that is my piece, but as an academic I have to get back to getting courses ready, Check in later.

I hated my room growing up. It was my mother’s vision of a boy’s room should look like. Which is why it looked like a room for a 8 year old when I was 16. I’d put up posters on the walls and my mom would take them down while I was at school because “they didn’t match the room”. And I won’t go into the details about the awful “I want a bean bag in my room” incident when I was 15.I get where Toni is coming from, but I prefer Brad’s thinking. Let the kid have her room and decorate it the way she wants…maybe with a set budget so she can’t go too crazy. That way she gets to make some personal decisions but learns about the real world aspects of having some limits. After all, nobody is ever really free to do 100% whatever they want. But don’t make it feel like a room she is being allowed to borrow until she grows up and moves out. I speak from experience, that is not a good feeling.

Change the orange to terracotta. Still orangish. And have that be the accent wall color.

I picked a bright yellow accent color to paint my entire bedroom when I was a kid. My Dad secretly added white to the paint to tone it down. It still was very bright, very yellow. I loved it. He didn’t tell me about the added white until I was married and had a house of my own – with no bright yellow walls.

no more Shannon

Give it a day or two. Shannon will change her mind. Then she will change it again. And again. (She’s a 6 year old after all.)

most excellent…

How is a child choosing colors and designs that THEY like not the best idea?

As my mother would have said, “When you pay the bills, you can paint the walls any color you like, until then they will be green.” (Green was her favorite color and thankfully mine also.)

I thought Puce WAS Pukey…

My bet is that Shannon doesn’t know what puce looks like. She heard the word somewhere and likes the sound of it.

The best solution is to come up with a set of three or four colors that work well together and let Shannon pick two of them. One will be the main color and the other will be the accent color. That way, Shannon gets to pick her colors but it’s something that Aunt Toni can live with. Easy Peasy.

I agree with Toni. We are dealing with a real room not a coloring book or a doll house, and certainly not a Brat cave.

In the end I alone will execute the wall color(s). BWA-HAHAHA!!!. My RGB paint swatches are limited and highly subjective choices, puny Earthlings!! Just a fair warning. Toodles.

Shannon is not a calm low key kid and doesn’t want bland cream of wheat for walls. I’ll bet there are colorful removable wall stick-ons that don’t ruin the paint. Or better yet paint the calm wall and get a puce colored sheet or colorful mural.

I enjoy the fact that even in an argument they’re not getting mad, but working on a solution. Marriage goals.

Cue sitcom laugh track.

tomorrow; Shannon declared herself an independent contractor.

Okay, so we have ourselves a stalemate. Some folks keep calling Shannon a brat, but others insist on calling the guy in the white tee shirt, Bwad.

Show some flexibility, Toni. It is supposed to be Shannon’s room; not yours, not anyone else’s. Let her have the wall colors she wants and can tolerate.

Disclaimer: I have an unusual, bright color for my bedroom walls….

My mom let me pick out the colors for my bedroom when I was 6 years old. I picked out bright yellow walls and purple curtains and bedspread!

We let our daughter do her own bedroom. Walls were yellow and let her paint (draw) anything she wanted on the walls. The walls were covered with drawings. She even had her friends sign and comment on her walls. You have to choose your battles. BTW, she is now an owner and CEO of her own company that employs over 200. :)

puce is disgusting