I can’t even remember how I stumbled upon this blog years ago, but holy smokes, what I do remember is not being able to get enough of it. I sat in my darkened office long after Burdy had gone to bed and crammed my guffaws into my sweater sleeve so as not to wake him. The next morning, Burdy asked me what was so important that I had to stay up half the night hunched over my computer screen.
You know how when you find something so good you just ignore everything around you? Like food and sleep hygiene and all that? That’s what happened with this blog. I started reading on a Monday night and the next thing I knew, it was the middle of the day on a Wednesday and I had, like, five voicemails from friends wondering if I was okay and did they need me to break down the door with an ax?
The reason I love these posts so damned much is because Victoria manages to describe the EXACT relationship I have with Burdy over shiny household things. The only difference is I am nowhere NEAR the awesome decorator she is. In fact, you could (and should, really) say I have the taste of a cross between my sister’s Sicilian uber-DIY father-in-law for whom red, white, and green spray paint and a roll of duct tape are all you need to make home repairs, and a Hawaiian-shirt- funky-glasses-wearing antiques dealer who collars his Min-Pin in rhinestones. Did I just refer to myself as two male stereotypes? I did. Is that because they only thing remotely feminine/soft/not-broken about our apartment decor is the pink hue of the mildew I can’t ever clean out of the bathtub? I'm not sure. Let's just go with it.
But, oh, how I love the shiny! And, oh, how I love a good deal on the shiny! And, oh, the distances I will drive/gas I will waste/physics I will ignore/crazy I will put up with to have at that shiny! I don’t really care that we can’t fit more typewriters into our living room. Or that we don’t need four velvet chaise lounges in 600 square feet of living space. Or that we already HAVE several (dozen) typewriters in our apartment already. Or that we have a baby who will soon want to EAT the typewriters. I must have the NEW, SHINY typewriter. Or the console table. Or the Baroque-gilded mirror. Or the pitcher in the shape of a rooster. And poor, poor Burdy. He will sigh and shake his head and buckle himself into the car and hand me the last cash from his wallet so that I CAN have that shiny. And then he will sigh and shake his head and help me pack it into the garage until I move around all the OTHER shiny in the apartment to make room for the NEW shiny.
Every few days, I am notified that Victoria has posted something new and I swear that notification feels like the first hints of sunlight on Christmas morning. And because I have a baby now and because everything takes five times longer to do, her posts feel like gifts, which I only allow myself to open after I’ve made breakfast and put the baby down for a nap. This system works well because I NEED something to look forward to after doing battle one-handed with two eggs and an infant. This morning the baby was making it extremely difficult to get anything into my mouth because, when she wasn’t reaching for things like knives and cast-iron skillets, she was screaming bloody murder from her playmat. I had to seriously ask myself how I would explain a grease splatter burn on my baby’s forehead because I JUST NEEDED TO EAT ALREADY and she was hell-bent on reaching for the sausages. The more astute and experienced among you might ask why I need to make breakfast from scratch every morning when I could just as easily throw some boiling water over some instant oatmeal or pop a toaster strudel in the oven, and to you I say: Feh! Making things difficult for myself is my life’s work, now please get out of the way. You’re blocking my vacuuming path and I can’t bloody well type up this blog post, search for crap on Craigslist, AND clean the carpet with you standing there like that.
Comments
Well hello and welcome to the club. We buy things we don’t need and rent storage spaces to store them cause otherwise, well, they’ll call the cops and the township on us!
PS-I have seating for maybe 200 people. And I am not kidding. I just scored 4 more chairs too.