Here is the House

I think it’s important to preface this by pointing out that I have black bean soup on my boob. I had a rough dinner, as I banged my knee on the table, and black beans flew everywhere. It seems appropriate in light of what I’m about to talk about, really, which is that I am, in general, a slob who can’t dress herself or even consider, maybe, a little decorating?

My house is a mess. It’s clean, in terms of clean toilets, a clean kitchen and mostly, the floors are clean and GAWD yes, we have clean sheets, as I’m insane about cleanliness, though you would never ever guess. But otherwise? Um, I can’t seem to live like a grown up. I thought by now, I don’t know, that I’d have matching furniture or something on the walls. Oooh ooh – plants! Live ones, that I would nurture into glorious life, full of flowers and maybe fruit! Kumquats. Yes, I would have kumquats outside here in Florida, next to my lemon tree, where we would pick fat lemons and make pies. And there would be interesting art on the walls! Like African artifacts that I picked up on safari and maybe a Chinese silkscreen from that trip to Bejing, because I would be well-traveled, in addition to possessing impeccable style. Ooh ooh, and photographs! That I took! Black and white prints! That people would come to my house and ask where they could by them, and I would modestly offer them a print from my personal collection, gratis.

Yes. Yes, that’s how it would be.

Or not.

Instead, my living room looks like this:

That’s a fake mini palm in the corner. Costco. We’re classy.

But that’s not all! There is the wonder that is our dining room:

Everything moved to the center of the room so we can paint. We’ve been looking for a new table for months, but can’t agree. Instead, I think the cat tree makes a nice table. And please tell me someone else lives this way. No? Just me then?

I might vacuum, but I can’t pick up regularly, especially during PMS. Take, for example, the floor on my side of the bed:

But, truthfully, the piece de resistance is definitely the nightstand. It has everything I could possibly need, plus a few spores. Granted, it’s never been this bad before, as with the PMS this week, I’ve just been….COLLECTING and not CLEANING, which terrifies even me, but how horrifying is this? What kind of person lives this way?

But lastly, I will leave you with this unrelated photo that is keeping me awake at night. I found this outside the door near my office. It’s about four inches long, and when I walked to the hardware store for a Dr. Pepper, I noticed, oh, I don’t know, a hundred of these? Dead, along the perimeter of the building. Which means, hello, at one point they were in the building. With me.

**Depeche Mode

18 comments July 18th, 2006