This Is What Happens When June Leaves The House

you can see more of this great photography here

I thought this weekend was going to be awesome and I was right. Friday night I went out with three of my co-workers, it was just so SATC with the lemon drop cocktails, high heels and hot outfits. But we are way more interesting than Carrie and friends. Our new mom friend, E rounded up a few of us for drinks because: “I never go anywhere anymore unless it’s work and I‘m sick of staying at home.”

If you wanted to play the SATC name game you could call her Miranda. She resembles Miranda in that she’s tallish with chin length hair and has a uterus. But E is funny and without the bitter and markedly un-funny brittleness of Miranda. She’s also about a million and ten times more interesting than Miranda. E also really loves her boyfriend and doesn’t treat him like crap. It helps her Boy is more Aiden than Steve.

M. “Our Lady Of The Bouncy Ponytail” came a little late but was very much present before she got there. She is like Charlotte physically: gamine, cute and smart. A lot smarter than Charlotte. M just read a book with the title--I kid you not--Why Men Love Bitches to try and understand why her boyfriend started having meltdowns about her “rushing” him into marriage. She reely admits (but not too much) she isn't sure she wants to marry him and she knows she isn’t ready to get married. Cute, gamine, smart but not desperate like Charlotte. \So far the advice in the book has worked because M’s Boy has simmered the Hell down and has become the boy she was dating six months ago.

So before anyone starts thinking…I’m thinking of myself as the Bushnell character…stop…take a breath and look next to Carrie. I’m her weird little gay boyfriend with the big glasses and the bright suits. Total misfit with these babes. They keep me around because I'm funny. Or at least think I'm hilarious.

Last but certainly not least, there’s our MILF friend (she had a co-starring role in a blog last summer) Uh…huh…she is Samantha but this time Samantha landed Mr. Big. Our S actually funny and doesn’t pose or speak in smirky pronouncements that pretend to be biting when really they are yawn inducing. She’s also one of the most generous and down to earth women I know. Our Samantha is the real deal. S is also a new gramma at the ripe old age of 45 and proud to be The Hot Gramma. And boy howdy, she won’t let you forget she’s The Hot Gramma. S has probably the most perfectly augmented breasts I’ve ever seen in real life (IN HER CLOTHING…OMG I work with this woman!! Gawd, get your minds’ out of the gutter!) But we did almost get a full frontal of them, given the cut of her extremely cut top. When we met outside of the restaurant, I gave her a hug and confessed.

“So don’t hate me if I forget to look you in the eye, because damn…your breasts? Sort of hard to miss.”

“Oh don’t worry about it, I paid enough for them I want people to look at ’em. Why I have ’em!”

E joins us, gives both of us hugs and says,” S those are some breasts you’ve got there!”

“I told her that I was going to have a hard time looking her in the eye.”

“June, I’m going to have a hard time looking her in the eye! And girls have never really occurred to me as an option!” Clearly, E was already mesmerized by The Breasts, too.

Later after a couple of yummy Lemon drop Martinis we are seated and had met our waiter we were left on our own to muse about this young man who was incredibly monotone and a bit shall we say…stiff?

“June did you notice how when we gave him our order he didn’t even look at us but stared at S’s breasts?”

I narrowed my eyes and smiled an evil grin: “I did notice that. I wonder if he will look at us at all.”

“But Oh my gawd, he was so boring, he needs to you know…LOOSEN UP! Yay!! I mean talk to us, be friendly. Have a conversation with us!” S let go with one of her patent party girl moves that never fails to make me laugh even during the weirdest moments at work.

You can only imagine what happened over the next few hours, every time we called him to the table, S would bend over just a little bit and lean forward. Every time she did this patented Pin Up Girl move he would stammer and his affect would become even more flat. We had made an unspoken pact with one another to mess with this kid.

We acted like complete Mean Girls and squealing with laughter every time he took he and his discomfort away from the table with yet another drink order and sushi request. And after an hour of waiter torture M joined us. When she sat down with us, I thought this waiter was either going to have a seizure or run away crying like a scared little girl because M isn’t just pretty, she is Hollywood pretty. Luminous comes to mind when you see her. Not only is she pretty and smart but she reads people like Lady Cleo on the psychic network so after ordering her drink she turned to S and pointedly said:

“Dude, he is totally NOT looking at your face. You knew that didn’t you? I mean has he stopped looking at your boobs, at all?”

We all squealed with laughter again but while I was laughing I sort of felt sorry for him because I think he was hypnotized by her boobs and was in some kind of Tata induced trance which rendered him speechless. Or at least I hoped that’s what it was because if it wasn’t.

Dude was boring.

Housewife Posse

She looks in the mirror and stares at the wrinkles that weren't there yesterday
And thinks of the young man that she almost married
What would he think if he saw her this way?

She picks up her apron in little girl-fashion as something comes into her mind
Slowly starts dancing rememb'ring her girlhood
And all of the boys she had waiting in line

Oh, such are the dreams of the everyday housewife
You see ev'rywhere any time of the day
An everyday housewife who gave up the good life for me

The photograph album she takes from the closet and slowly turns the page
And carefully picks up the crumbling flower
The first one he gave her now withered with age

She closes her eyes and touches the house dress that suddenly disappears
And just for the moment she's wearing the gown
That broke all their minds back so many years

Oh, such are the dreams of the everyday housewife
You see ev'rywhere any time of the day
An everyday housewife who gave up the good life for me

Oh, such are the dreams of the everyday housewife
You see ev'rywhere any time of the day
An everyday housewife who gave up the good life for me

I know…I know…totally sexist. Totally. The line: “she picks up her apron in little girl-fashion” makes me shutter like Sideshow Bob when he sees Bart Simpson. But I remember hearing this song when I was a little girl and being completely entranced by this secret society of Housewives and I wanted to be a part of it when I was five. It was the ultimate girls club. I’ve more or less been in this girls club for twenty years. There is a sense of ease in this club, setting our own hours and making the household rules. But up until ten years ago it was really hard and really boring. The hardest part was the constant interruptions. I felt much like one of these damsels in distress in the picture above (It's a photo I took in San Francisco a few years ago) The marauders in the background are our children and husbands. I don’t think Ms.A and I had an uninterrupted conversation the first five years of our friendship. Much less a conversation that followed a steady stream of thought because somebody needed their butt wiped, their nose wiped or their hair patted. Oh. My. God. It’s amazing we knew as much about one another as we did. Given most of our conversations went something like:

“So E told me the curriculum is about to be decided and it looks like trees and flow--Billy, NO!!! NO!!! You and Wally may not climb up the stairs like that!” “What were we talking about?”

“Flowers? Oh, did you get the primroses or the hybrid tea roses for the garden?” “Beav, if you want a cookie ask. Ask Ms. A politely with a please and a thank you, don’t just grab”

“Did I tell you theMr. found that Bulgarian tea we like…Where’s my baby [The Prince of Darkness was his nickname at the time]? Where did little Prince of Darkness go? Billy? Have you seen your brother? …

If reading that stream-of-consciousness didn’t make your head hurt, try living it. I lived those disjointed post preschool pre cocktailnap conversations.

But now we have real conversations and speak in complete sentences. Like grown ups. The only time we are interrupted is if Kipper is barking in the background and I have to pause and tell him to simmer down or knock it off or hush. I’ve enjoyed our long conversations and our leisurely walks and coffee dates but alas, another child is on the way and we are naming her The New Career. Ms. A has a sweet new job that’s a cross between Nina in the film Office Space and the chick featured in Cake‘s “Short Skirt and Long Jacket“ song from eons ago. I’m very happy for her and she is just one of several friends who are starting careers again in their 50’s. It’s exciting and amazing to watch. But…but…but…what about me????

sigh sigh sigh


I’ve no one to have coffee with now. My Housewife Posse are all employed outside their homes from 9 to 5 Monday through Friday and will be having cases of the Mondays, looking forward to Hump Day, TGIF and asking themselves if they are working hard or hardly working. And what do ya’ know? Me too! I’m going to be working consistently three weekdays with few weekends like a normal person. What the hell happened here? Posse when poof!

I guess I’m gonna have to get busy and you know…reinvent myself, too. I might as well because there isn’t anyone available for coffee next Wednesday.

Trivial Pursuits

Steam Reassures Him

My husband is watching me iron,
Steam reassures hm. The hiss of starch
The probing slide around each button of his shirt
Speaks to him of Solway Street in Pittsburgh.
As for me, the wicker basket is a reproach.
There is last summer’s nightgown,
And several awkward round tablecloths
Which refuse to lie flat.

My house specializes in these challenges.
Bags of mail I did not ask to receive
Choke the floor of my linen closet.
A photograph of me, holding a baby on a beach.
But which beach and, for that matter, which baby?
A Japanese chest whose bottom drawer has irresponsibly locked itself,
And who can remember where I put the key?

That night, waiting for sleep, I whisper,
I did only trivial things today.
And he asks, Why aren’t you painting?

Elizabeth Pierson Friend 1933-2003 ("Japanese Box" was painted by her in 1982 and taken from her website)

A few years ago, after I read this poem, I immediately sent it to Oldest Friend, no doubt in an email titled something like: "Because I was ironing your shirts, Dumb Ass" Stupid husband, she was running household with all it's drivel and he is hounding her to paint. Why wasn't he doing something to help so she could paint! Like...um...I don't know...iron his own shirts, look for the key, read the mail? I just knew OF would completely get the angst of this poem because she had been there so many times with her husband(s). I will never forget her first husband asking her when she was getting a job because all she ever did was write and that wasn't really much of a contribution. Mind you, she cooked, cleaned and laundered while she was working on her thesis. What he missed was WRITING WAS HER JOB. Over the last few years I have lightened up on the husband in the poem and have sat the responsibilty squarely on the shoulders of the woman. It wasn't like he said: "Too bad about that painting, today, cuz you're one talented little lady, y'know. So did you get them shirts all ironed for me, or what?" Now I read his tone as sympathetic and he does recognize the importance of her art to her essential self and her wellbeing. That doesn't mean I think the inequality between artists who are spouses is a thing of the past. Frankly, I think silencing the wife in these marriages is due to a fragile male ego. OF has run against this ego time and time again with her husband who is a writer. One would think he would get it...But again, writing is not her "real" work. Who is to blame for this blindspot? As much as I would like to place a broad stroke of blame over the entire male population on the planet, I can't. Women need to take resonsibility for claiming their creative selves and the act of making art is tangible work. However, we simply reaffirm this creative process isn't real work when we turn the other cheek and scuff our toe in the dirt and say things like: "well I guess I don't have time to make that picture or write that sonnet because I need to sew a button on a jacket or make lunch." To be succinct about this: Ishould take responsibility for claiming the value of creating. I don't even have a man telling me ironing takes precidence over writing.

I do need to clarify that I am the only person in my life who gives me the message "your writing isn't valuable". I am fortunate to be fully supported in my endeavors and this support is not feighed hairpatting or half assed. Given this, it is now up to me to make my art real and declaring it an important focus in my life; not something which amuses me after the ironing is completed. Last night, when I reread this oem, I read it as an internal dialgue between my higher self and my lower self:

"Why aren't you [writing]?"

"I don't know. Perhaps I'm frightened. Perhaps I'm frightened what I have to say is uninteresting and people will read and then laugh in all the wrong places for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps I'm afraid I'm wrong and I don't have anything of merit to say. Maybe it scares me that I will never write literature as meaningful and evocative as LaMott or Niffennegger."

"So you aren't writing because you are certain it won't transcend time and have great meaning for many? Great excuses. But the icing on them is this: you don't want to write unless it sings out like LaMott or Niffenneger? Because everyone knows Time Traveler's Wife was published in first draft form. Egomania much, June? Well I guess this takes care of the whole writing thing. If you don't write, you won't fail. You won't succeed either. It's a good thing great writers have never failed...sheesh just shut up and write."

I litter my life with so many things in lieu of sitting in front of the screen that giving the people I have conjured becomes secondary. Trivial pursuits are my excuses. I have filled the last four days with more or less trivial activites rather than fulfilling a self made promise to write a few hours each day I'm home. Not only are my actions avoidance behavior but they also reaffirm this whole writing hting isn't real. I mock myself when I ask: "Why aren't you writing."

Late summer is here and this is the time of year I kick start projects or reach big decisions. The transformation I'm seeking this August is creating the discipline of writing. It wasn't enough to say, "on my extra day off this summer, I will write." The days I have worked at my writing--over and above the blog--have been deeply satisfying, and to put it simply, fun. I need to own this feeling and recognize the special value writing has for my life. Hell, even if it's just a hobby that doesn't render it meaningless.

Leaving behind my excuses is problematic in some ways. If I leave them behind, someone will need to tackle the sack of mail, the mysteriously locked cabinet and the misshapen table cloth. I have a story to tell.

To Be Continued

I've developed the habit of writing while I'm waiting. I keep a stack of index cards in my bag--Moleskins too fine for the likes of my hackery--and free write either what I'm observing or things weighing on my mind. The Beav graduated from the eighth grade yesterday and I was actually early for something so I seized the opportunity to write.

The Beav has successfully graduated from many things like sucking his thumb, sippy cups, diapers, kindergarten, lying about taking baths and the fifth grade. Today is another graduation referred to as a "continuation". This is my fourth continuation and Wally cheated me out of an actual graduation because he didn't want to be "bothered" with the ceremony and "sitting around just to hear my name". I feel alien to this White Mommy Daddy world so gatherings at the boys' schools make me a bit anxious. I am seated alone and not bothering to save places for Ward and Alexis especially after last night's Saga Of The Pants.[Ward was supposed to buy Beav some new pants and didn't. I got to do it at 8:30 on Monday night after a very stressful twelve hour shift which evolved into thirteen hours. Needless to say the conversation we shared was colorful]

The people around me are dressed in a sort of upscale casual and one woman in particular takes this continuation thing seriously, donning a lovely geen and white halter dress more suitable for an evening wedding. I can't image what she wears to weddings. Sparkles? But it suits her, she of the blond carefully exercised set. The type I see talking in a quick clipped cadence on wee phones as they pause between the hearth breads and chocolates at Whole Foods. Her resplendent dress is a relief, I thought I was overdressed in my flowy black linen dress, the sort of thing worn on a patio sharing drinks and sailing stories with people named Mimi and Biff.

So many familiar and well known faces in the gym this afternoon; many acquaintances for the last two decades a few of them were even friends. But having fallen out of their orbit they have forgotten me. Pity this, I'm a lot of fun to know and interesting company. Many of the mothers are easily ten or more years younger and this is probably their second big milestone with their kids. Most of us are watching from the jaded seat of having done this a few times before and know the real pay off will be when they graduate from high school.

I recognized one mom of a boy Beav played with when they were kindergartners. I still remember where I was standing and what I was doing when she called to tell me her boy was no longer allowed to play with Beav at my house. My first conclusion was she had heard via the grapevine I was lesbian. She gave me a self-righteous speech about how she didn't want Little Darling playing at a divorcee's house in the city. I was polite and gave her a canned speech about how we would miss Crown Prince. I wanted to ask if she was she afraid the ennui, dissatisfaction and final despair I experienced would jump onto her boy like a cold germ and then rub off on her hands as she scrubbed away the wretched city dirt after his playdate? Or was she already infected and couldn't risk further exposure in an effort to keep all the bad stuff dormant? "Is denying you are unhappy easier than admitting failure like I did?" Most of my days as a young mother were marked by unhappiness, frustration and helplessness. Years ago, Dear Abby poised the question "if you had to do it all over again, would you have children?" My resounding answer would be no. I have too much baggage to visit on defenseless children and I am far too selfish to be a good mother.

But this particular emotional mud puddle won't keep me from milestones like a Continuation. My regret and insecurity won't stop me from feeling joy and pride when Beav's name is called as an honor student. Beav is my pay back for watching the heart wrenching struggle and defeats his brother experienced in school. Regret doesn't prevent me from feeling cheated I'm not watching Wally walk across the stage after spending so many years symbolically dragging him through school.

Milestones like this lighten my dark and heavy heart because I have succeeded in continuing as a mother when so many days I just wanted to quit. The darkness doesn't dampen the joy I feel when one or the other succeeds at something, nor does it quiet worry when I see them making decisions I perceive as ruinous. Last week, Wally proved I had done something right. Nestled in the thorns of all of my bad parenting he has found his path . Wally made a life altering decision completely independently from me or his father. Isn't this what we ultimately want for our children the second they leave our bodies? Isn't independence the goal? But when I heard he had stepped away from the Navy and joined the Army I was angry. Over the thunder of my helicopter blades snapping the air as I lectured about commitment and seeing things through. Now I can see the root of my anger rests solely in not being consulted. My eldest is continuing without me. As it should be.

Image by Blake Flynn

The Big Plan

When I was a little girl, I made elaborate schedules for myself and at eight, had I known what a algorithm was, I would have taken the self scheduling thing one hundred steps further and substituted this:

Get up
Brush Hair
Brush Teeth
Feed Cat
Feed Self

With some sort of schematic for what I was supposed to accomplish every morning before school.
(Seriously, this is what I posted--caps and all--on the back of my bedroom door when I was eight because I needed a reminder to feed the cat) I was very diligent with this schedule, too. I wish I still had that first list because it was the beginning of a compulsion: making schedules for myself in the form of to-do lists. Unfortunately, with age my lists have become more elaborate and if I were completely insane I’m sure I would have algorithms in place with arrows and lines as back up plans. Today has proven to be one of those “best laid plans. . .” days, where the to-do list looks like an algorithm what “oh God, what now! “ My day was supposed to look like this:

Get up (I find it necessary to include this forty years later in case I try to work out or take a shower while still in bed)
Gym
The Beav to school
Work in the yard
Write
Beav from school
Read (I’m such a freak I schedule my ‘recreation’) [this is also code for lay in the sun]
Dinner prep

This is what happened:
Don’t sleep
Get up in time to make sure The Beav is up for school
Decide he needs one more sick day (just a cold no H1N1) but should go to the doctor
Go back to bed for an hour
Make doctor’s appointment for the boy
Go back to bed for another hour
Shower
Run errands on the way to the doctor because the dry cleaner and the vet are on the way
Go to the Doctor
Finally do something on your to do list (this is where the arrow goes around to “write” on my dream list)

Lessee, I’m accomplishing one thing on my list so far.

I came up with my dream schedule while I was cleaning yesterday. This was going to be my day. No more cleaning, no more digging in the dirt or moving things around. My only real responsibilities were The Beav and dinner. In my defense, this slothful day was brought about after nearly a week of planting two large flower beds and a vegetable garden. Most people wouldn’t balk at being this busy. But I refuse to be overscheduled. And I loath people who are always: “Ohmygawd! I am so crazy busy! ” The evil people in my head want to say something like: for the love of God just stop doing whatever bullshit it is you do because it really doesn’t make you or your life more important if you are “too busy”. I strive at under scheduling my life and my housewife pals always admired my boundary setting skills. “You want me to bake something for the preschool that day? Nope, can’t do it. I already have something planned for that day and I don’t plan more than one activity a day! “ I must confess this penchant for avoiding over scheduling too much is not from mad boundary setting skills but sheer laziness.

I had to leave off the slothful life because the flower beds were prepared and the calendar says it’s May. I was daunted by this task because I’ve never taken on such a huge gardening project. I had helped with a vegetable garden when Wally was a baby. Ward did the heavy lifting, I weeded a bit and harvested. The Fabulous House in the Suburbs had established landscaping and I did attempt one flower bed but it was an abysmal failure and led me to believe I had a black thumb. The “do you garden” question was always met with an apologetic shake of the head. However, the success of my seedlings (now out in the big world) and the many thriving plants in the beds for nearly a week, all surviving my hand are leading me to believe I might be a gardener after all. More telling, than week old plants, is the joy I felt working in the dirt. The only way I can describe the joy I feel when I look out on my flower beds is like the small child who has successfully built a miniture building from random blocks. Remember how they look when the complex and architecturally impossible structure was complete? My boys would sit back on their haunches, arms outstretched, eyes never leaving the towers and shout out a gleeful: “Ta-Da!!!” I want to stand in the front yard and shout: “Ta-Da!” Maybe I will in August when my lovely garden is blooming.

I loved working in the beds and it felt good to be dirty and sore. Part of me wishes I had more to plant; but until the fall, I must be content with watering, deadheading and weeding. I had always thought the whole: “just go outside and you will feel better” advice aimed at the depressed was some kind of pseudo hippy back-to-nature bladdy-blah. I found the dirt theory has merit; I felt rejuvenated by it and the fresh air. It even felt good to work in the damp drizzle for a couple of days. And had I known how meditative gardening is, I would have started years ago. At last an excuse to live in my head! I found myself composing letters to the long lost in my life. The letters were stories rather than self flagellating apologies which is the tone my spinning usually takes (link). At times I did have to pay close attention to what I was doing. The work was niggling and fussy when the roots of a few of my new plants (I’m looking at you Shasta Daisies) were matted and tangled in big clumps. The exercise of untangling the mass without breaking them, to separate the plants safely, reminded me of untangling and unwinding the small IV lines and life support tubes connected to my wee patients years ago in the NICU. Fussy work is not my favorite sort of work.

Transplanting the seedlings was fussy, too. As I transplanted the tendrils, I recalled a dream or a memory of helping my father when I was five or so. We had a big garden and my job was to stick my finger in the dirt making a small round hole where he would place the seed. My finger placing round holes with such diligence, I can still see my dirty and bitten nail as I pulled it from the loamy soil. I remember watching him coax the seedlings into the ground with the aid of an iced tea spoon’s long handle; the handle a sort of guide or crutch against the tender new born stalk. The mind works in such magnificent ways and I found myself doing just this with my own wee cucumbers; only then remembering the close heat and sun on my neck, the smell of the pine trees and how, when I looked up from my task, they made a gigantic fence around our yard. I know remembering the cloying heat helped me tolerate the damp chill the other day.

When I had decided to attack the new flower beds this week, I was going to catch up on Podcasts while I worked. But I forgot my Ipod and discovered the sounds of the crows, dogs and breeze, even the distant traffic, was friendly company. I can’t remember if it was quiet in the garden when I was a little girl. Chances are the silence was punctuated by birdsong which was then interrupted by construction noise. My favorite silence is the silence of the mesa in a snow storm. I have never heard such quiet as the sound of snow covering that vast emptiness.

So today, The Big Plan was flummoxed and thrown out the window and we went, instead to the dry cleaners, doctor and vet. The Big Plan hit the first wall last night at midnight when I still wasn’t asleep for worrying over the dog’s panting and labored breathing. I lay awake for hours listening to him; composing how I would prepare myself to find him miserable and exhausted this morning. It would be time for his last car trip. I rehearsed what it will be like to make the phone calls when it is time for him to leave us. Fortunately, the only one worse for the night’s troubled breathing was me. Kip awakened his merry self, wanting to go outside to have a big sniff and make sure all was right with his world. He was fine and would be with us yet another day. He felt well enough to woo-wooo-wooof at us for food and grrr-grrr-grrr when we wouldn’t let him outside to play in the sprinkler.

My perfect day stalled by life. Yet again, life having a more perfect day in mind for me. I was lucky enough to have an interesting conversation with The Beav that ranged from his persnickety math teacher who doesn’t believe in time to make up homework if you are sick (my question was: what if you are in a coma or your hands are burned?) to the labor reforms which came about after The Jungle was published. I still had plenty of time to fuss over this writing exercise; I’ll have time to hang in the sun for an allotted hour, water my plants; maybe even have a beer. But we won’t harsh my mellow with the gritty reminder I must cook dinner tonight.

Perhaps if I hacked up a lung, I could get out of dinner. Unfortunately, I can’t let that happen because it’s not on The List.

*the photo is from flikr Creative Commons by "A River Runs Through It" thanks to the generosity of such creative folks.

The Sawdust Did It

There is a fussy German frau living inside this haphazard housewife. Some days I can let the dust and the mystery ick in weird places go, others not so much and today was one of those days. I found myself mentally shaking a fist at the people who live here because they splash dishwater down the front of the cabinets, leave finger prints on light switches and the ‘frig; allow dust to build up on bathroom counters and splashes accumulate on the mirror. How could they do this to me? I have a laundry room to decorate: with paint, tile and hardware to select and wall art to create. I clean on Tuesday’s and it didn’t go so well today because I would rather be looking for tile and paint. So I half-assed it because I’m sick of doing it. Which will piss me off next week when the house is doubly hard to clean because it was half-assed to begin with. The truth of the matter is I love to clean but lately it’s become a big fat ugly chore. A chore like cooking is a chore. A chore like balancing the checkbook is a chore. A chore like anything-I-should-do-but-I-don’t-care-to-do-in-the-moment is a chore.

I blame the sawdust.

For a couple of weeks The Girl has tirelessly been building cabinets for the laundry room. So there has been a lot of sawdust scattered through the house. It’s driving me crazy. Our house was a blank page when we moved in almost two years ago to the day. A foreclosure, the realtor/developer came through with a paint sprayer coating every vertical surface with white paint; "updating the floors with the crappiest carpet and vinyl flooring imaginable.

If we had only looked at this house a week earlier undoing what "Ladies Man" did in an effort to move the house from 1969 Suburban Chic to 1990’s Slum lord would have been one of those bad daydreams you brush away with a shudder. Every goddamned room in this house needs or needed work. (to clarify, we nicknamed Fannie Mae's realtor "Ladies Man" after this character)

I thought any minute he was going to invite us over to his place for some Courvoisier so we could “discuss further the ramifications of my highly esteemed organization replacing the furnace that may or may not be faulty.” To say this guy pissed me off is an understatement. Thinking about him still pisses me off and raises my feminista hackles . But I digress.


It must be the sawdust.

Today, after I finished damning my family to a level of hell where they see the menace of dust but aren’t allowed to do anything about it; I started ruminating over the latest neighborhood I discovered in our Next Town; the place we will probably move after Beav finishes high school. One of my time sucking hobbies is partaking in real estate porn cruising houses on Realtor.com. The city we are looking at is considerably cheaper so it’s fun to do a dollar to dollar search. Next Town is in Bible Belt and people sort of freak out when I tell them where we are considering making a home. It's also my home town and a place I vowed never to return. I am choosing to egnore warnings it could be Redneckville and we won’t be greeted with open arms and a basket of muffins but something akin to: “Y’all sisters?…or what?…” cue ominous sound of a shotgun being cocked But really, who cares if Billy Bob and Dar Leene hate us because Jesus hates dirty homosexuals! We can afford a lovely house with a pool! Yeah! The pool will not only refresh us in the southern heat but will make a great place to extinguish the burning crosses. The unhealthiest part of the obsession with House Porn is when I dial down the price and discover the fixers in the same neighborhoods. I find myself swoony over the footprint and the bones of certain houses. Nightmares even more nightmarish than the one I live in. “Oh look at those cabinets they just need to be refinished. . .I bet that has hardwood underneath it. . .I could take that window out and put a door to the patio. . .a little paint would be perfect. . .and it’s so cheap we would be able to just pay cash and fix it up for next to nothing!” I found another one just the other day. It has an interior atrium to die for and a kitchen in such bad shape TG would jump off a cliff before she agreed to this house.

Oh. My. God. I need a twelve step program. Best friend Ms. A has a friend, Pilot, who came up with the idea of creating a Flippers Anonymous Program. Pilot has it bad, too. In the last three years he has done two houses. And he lives in them while he renovates. Sick, sick man. But I totally get it. I blame being a control freak. I have to make everything my own; put my mark on it. Like Kipper, only it’s paint not pee when I mark things. This also explains why (as hard as this is going to be for TG to hear) the idea of a turn key ready house is a terribly boring concept to me. I hate boring.

Which is probably why I’ve never had a proper laundry room (or adequate closets for that matter) because I am usually drawn to quaint little houses with big souls? The closest thing I have come to a laundry room was a designated area in the basement of Mrs. Ward Cleaver’s Fabulous House in the Suburbs. But it wasn’t a proper laundry room; it was where the hook ups were in the basement. A special room designated to cleaning clothes makes me feel terribly grown up. I think this grown up feeling is why, when we discussed redoing the laundry room one of my first questions was: “Can we have a chandelier in there? I think it would be a pleasant surprise to see a chandelier in the laundry room.” And wouldn't this fixture be adorable in a peach oned laundry room.

I wish I could blame the sawdust.