This morning Kevin the squirrel is happily munching on bird seed outside my window, when Bob calls. “Hey honey, do you want the third floating shelf in the kitchen above or below the cased opening?”
Questions like this come up day after day – where to put light switches, where to tile a shower niche. It’s not like building our house in VA, but it’s similar; like a slower, pandemic-style renovation of half an old house with two inch red oak floors they don’t make anymore. After years of renting in Nashville and feeling locked into a semi-permanent viral stasis, we’re finally going to move into our own home next month!
So far we’ve had fun planning our kitchen and master suite renovation. We bumped into an amazing daylight-like light fixture at Costco and bought two, one for the new pantry and one for the old laundry room/mud room. We’ve roamed around monstrous tile warehouses debating color and size. We’re researching garage doors and toilets.
I don’t know why Bob doesn’t want a “smart” toilet. After all, it would open and close itself; not a small feature in a home where the man always leaves the seat up! Oh and the seat is heated. Plus, for just $2,000, you’re getting a fully equipped bidet. But Bob’s drawing the line at the throne room door.
A ‘smart’ refrigerator is one thing, the toilet is a step too far he told me. I guess that means I can order the ‘smart’ window shades that open and close according to my whim? Sometimes I wish I could call up an HGTV star like Hilary Farr and forget about all the myriad decisions. But I’m not sure I could relinquish control. And leaning towards design with some therapy involved wouldn’t be a bad thing.
“Asking for help, after all, runs counter to many of America’s most adamant myths: the moral superiority of self-sufficiency, the quiet dignity of suffering. “Tough Love” https://www.hgtv.com/shows/tough-love-with-hilary-farr rejects those ideas. Instead, it celebrates the people who realize they have a problem they can’t solve on their own. It treats the admission as the first step toward salvation. “I’m not here to judge,” Farr tells a client whose home, and whose life, she has come to rehabilitate. “I’m here to help.'”
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/02/self-help-hgtv-home-improvement/621493/
Honestly, I have no problem asking anyone for help with anything. I’ll have to ask Aunt Kiki what she thinks of all this smart technology. Of course she can’t say who her celebrity clients are, but she may explain to Bob why a ‘panic/tornado pantry’ is a good thing. Did you know we now have therapists who specialize in climate anxiety?
I remember the coal furnace in my foster parents’ kitchen. Center stage was an orange formica table with metal legs looking out the window at a large flowering dogwood tree, I can almost smell the cinnamon toast I would dip into Daddy Jim’s morning coffee. If home is a metaphor for our life, the kitchen IS the heartbeat of our family. It’s where I’ve passed down beloved recipes; it’s where TLC is put into action. And call me crazy, but I’m loving our blue kitchen cabinets.
MountainMornings 