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Well,
I have decided that all my present woes and worries can be attributed
to one thing. Television. Specifically, all those stupid, stupid
decorating shows. I am done with them. Done, I tell you. First off,
I blame the current difficulties many of us have had selling our
homes on the D.S. (Decorating Shows) phenom. We were lucky and our
house sold quickly. But oh my goodness, you should have heard the
after the open house critiques – no master suite, no deck, no bedrooms
on the first floor, small bathrooms, no spa, neighbors too close,
school across the street.
After the first open house and the first round of comments I felt
like putting notes up. "This house was built in 1937. They thought
a bath and a half was fancy enough. They never heard of spa tubs."
"You want a deck, build one." "The neighbors are nice. It’s okay
that they’re close." "What’s the matter? Do you hate children? What
else do you hate? America? God?" "The bed does not go with the house.
Get off of it!"
Our real estate agent thought my note idea was . . . not necessary.
And he said I couldn’t hang around and pretend to be a prospective
buyer either. Not me and not my sister. He couldn’t stop me from
parking the car in the school parking lot across the street and
critiquing the potential buyers – if he knew I was doing it, he
didn’t mention it. But that phase of our life is over. The house,
Our House, is sold and there are strangers living in it now. They
are probably busy painting the woodwork and feeding the koi Fritos.
But I don’t care. I’m over it. Completely.
The next reason
I hate the D.S. is because every episode they show happy, healthy,
apparently well adjusted people hemming curtains, whipping up day
bed covers from cloth they wove by hand and blithely and tirelessly
painting room after room after room a glorious spectrum of colors.
Tra-la-la! They make it look quick, easy and effortless.
In the week that we have been here at the new house I have personally
toted one million and three pounds of books, packed and unpacked
and re-packed and bagged and stored and donated. My hands are permanently
gray from the newsprint which has permeated the poor pores of my
paws (tee-hee). And I have painted. Exactly two rooms. I was supposed
to do room number three today but I just could not bear the idea.
It is not the walls that are my problem, not the thing which has
nearly crippled me. It is the "popcorn ceilings." Do they ever mention
that on those shows? Except to say to take it off.
I decided not to take it off because I have almost more mess than
I can deal with right now. If someone so much as drops a Kleenex
I will go screaming right over the edge. The first room I painted
and painted and painted. There are two gallons of paint on that
ceiling and a great deal of it was applied with a brush in little
bitty gentle daubs, which was the only way I could figure out how
to do it without losing great swaths of sticky wet popcorn.
I went to work the next day and, of course, whined and whined and
whined about the terrible time I had with the first ceiling. After
eleven and a half hours one of my patients’ visitors said, "For
heaven’s sake! Shut up! You have to paint it in one direction! Now
go away!"
I finished
up my work days and by the time my next day off rolled around I
was once again able to raise my arms above my shoulders and felt
ready to tackle the next room. But tell me, have any of you tried
to paint going in one direction? It’s awful. It’s not natural. It
is analogous to a grizzly bear walking on it’s hind legs. In stilettos.
And it doesn’t actually mean that the popcorn won’t come off. Evidently.
So, today I
took the day off from painting. I have another day off this weekend
and maybe by then I will be ready to go on. The whole house you
see, every single room, has popcorn ceilings. Miles and miles of
them. Why don’t I just buy a sprayer? Because buying a sprayer,
at this point, would be just like giving up. And THAT I won’t do.
© Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal
"The Girl Detective's
Theory of Everything"
January 28, 2008 Column
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