Historial? Home Tour

This weekend I went on a historial home tour in a city that will remain unnamed so that my mother "the Director of Homeland Security" will not throw herself down on the floor and scream about how you are all going to read this and then immediately find her house and break into it.

We have been to the historical unnamed city home tour for about four years running. There are usually about six sites around the unnamed city, which about four thousand glitter mafia ladies and ten dating divorced couples (evidently a good date?) descend upon. This year, it seems that they ran out of historical . . . and so just went with homes.

It's very hard to be a snotty-snotty-know-it-all and it is especially hard when you are descended from a snotty-snotty-know-it-all and you both go on a tour run by middle aged ladies with nothing to do. Because the historical home tour in unnamed city did not bog itself down with facts all that much . . . and that made us argumentative. Because we were right, dammit AND we were standing in a house built in 1989.

That's right . . . built in 1989. On the historical home tour. But it was decorated in Early American Colonial (as opposed to late American Colonial?) with Norwegian accents. And the homeowner made all the quilts. Surely that overtakes the whole built in 1989 thing?

I managed to keep my mouth shut through the "haunted house" lecture at the Tavern that was a guest house. The house wasn't haunted, but people look at you funny if you say such things. I mean maybe they can come and go . . . but it wasn't haunted at the time of me standing there. Because I would know. And you are welcome to look at me funny.

At the second house we got to see the "original wall" which was the ONLY thing that was left from the 1800's in that house. Everything else was Ethan Allen. Or Amish . . . except that it was pronounced AAAA mich. Long A and a mich. I wonder where they live, those woodworking people. Oh, and they were so nice, they came all the way up to Michigan and installed the dining room table that they made by hand. At Macy's, they just call that "delivery". And yes, it was a beautiful dining room table.

At the third house, my mother tried to argue about the banquette. Poor lady was sticking to the script and my mother was contradicting her performance.

"Interesting thing they did with the banquette."
"Oh, no, this was here. They didn't do anything with this."
"But usually, in this era of house, there was a banquette. The bench would have been along that wall."

But the lady was sticking to her story. The Formica counter and bar stools had been there since 1927. Because her paper didn't say they weren't original.

So it was a lot of walking through people's houses, with people who didn't know them giving tours . . . "and this was her great-grandmother's sliver of dial soap, saved through generations . . . this is a picture of the owner's niece's uncle's great-great-aunt . . . the carving on this goes back to 1919 (never mind the plastic) . . . "

Okay, so that one was true. We toured a very nice house built . . . well, I forget, but it was before the Civil War. And it is freshly painted and full of Pottery Barn. And the ladies were amazed by the Pottery Barn.

"Oh, how clever! They made this into a T.V. stand."
"Well, actually it is a Pottery Barn T.V. stand. (I point to the other pieces of furniture) And that's Pottery Barn and that's Pottery Barn and that's Pottery Barn."
"But how do you know?"
"Ummmm. I get the catalog."

So we get to the dining room. And there is a chandelier. And I am fascinated by it because it is EXACTLY like the chandelier I have in my dining room waiting to be painted. It's strung with more glitter, but exactly like it down to the plastic candles . . . except that mine has faux drips. So it's nicer. And the tour guide says, "And this chandelier is original to the house." And my head almost exploded. But I held my tongue. Because I had seen how well the banquette conversation went and no one wants to look dumb in front of eight glitter mafia . . . and me.

So I gathered lots of ideas. And someday will straighten my house so someone that I don't know can give tours.

"And these are the owner's grandmother's end tables . . . original Formica from 1962. And here is the owner's grandmother's plastic mirror . . . given to her by her employer, Dr. Egan when she retired in 1978. And here is the wooden bureau that the owner's grandmother found and then cut the legs off of, because it was too high and bugging her, which the owner's mother refinished. And here is the owner's great aunt Hazel's buffet and the other great aunt's marble coffee table and the owner's aunt's bed." So basically, just a bunch of stuff that the owner's mother didn't want in her house anymore but the owner cannot throw away . . . because then she would have to fill her house with Pottery Barn, like everyone else.

O' Christmas Tree . . . of Guilt

Yes, it's true . . . my mother isn't writing lies . . . it was my dream as a child to have a beautiful, MATCHING Christmas tree, just like the ones at Hudson's. I wanted the ornaments to have a color scheme, which would coordinate with the lights. Each year I would beg my mother to leave the hodge-podge of family ornaments in their boxes and start fresh. Couldn't it happen just once?

When moving to my own house, I inherited my Grandmother's (Thelma, not Flora . . . I'm not sure if Flora had a Christmas tree . . . ) artificial xmas tree. It is complete with my grandmother's hand painted markings, which don't match with the markings on the stem/trunk. And somehow there aren't enough "branches" for slots. And it's from the 1950's so I'm sure it's toxic and I've become barren and cancerous from putting it together this evening.

I love it. With all my heart. I love the fact that it's missing branches. I love the fact that there are forty-seven yellow marked branches for 12 yellow slots. I love the plastic evergreen-like prickles that are misaligned like hair that you have slept on. And last year . . . I made it matching. All matching silver ornaments. Lovely white star that lit up. Ahhhhh.

And this year, despite pretending to be Jewish for the most part, I went out and searched for the blue LED lights, that I had touched in late October and thought "I can't buy Christmas lights in October" . . . and then couldn't find them in December (Hartland Target. Evidently, no one goes there). Bright blue lights, coordinating silver ornaments . . .

And then my mother wrote her blog and the guilt set in. All those ornaments that she sent with the tree. Little silver bells engraved with the years 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974 . . . yeah, well, I don't have bells after that. I think because my parents had more kids and couldn't afford them. The weird piece of plaster with glued glitter that I made in kindergarten. The gold ornaments from Hudson's that they would engrave in front of you . . . shaky "Emily"s in some stranger's cursive. The late eighties, when my mother would buy an ornament and write on it with Sharpie (she had even more kids then) . . . I have a penguin from 1985.

I unwrapped them all and put them on the tree. I have to buy some tarnex for the silver bells. They are currently so tarnished, they are purple. But they are on the tree. The tree of guilt.

There will be pictures shortly. Just to prove to my mother that I unwrapped them all. Cause she's not coming over. I live east of I-275. And I can do the matching tree thing next year. And the kitten ornament is cute. The poodle ornament made by some aunt, not so much.

Happy Birthday Morna!

It's my mother's birthday today . . . and I'm catching up, as I'm getting towards 39 too, when I'm not pretending to be 27.

There is not a day that I do not thank my lucky stars because have a Mom that is also my best friend. She's wicked smart, has excellent taste, and is one of the most together people I know. She has always been supportive, even when she disagrees with my decisions. Oh, she'll let me know that she disagrees though, don't you worry . . .

Anyhow, not everyone has a mother that they want to call every day. I do. That makes me a very lucky girl.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Re: Dear FBI

My Mom's blog is hilarious today.

Family of Writing Techies

For those of you haven't recently . . . you should really read my mom's blog. It is really funny.

Bits of lint and cat hair.

Misnomer . . . or Just Average Smart

My mother was speaking about her possible future grandchildren last night at dinner. "I'm just afraid that your brother J.'s kids might regress to the mean . . . I just hope they're not disappointed, what with M so smart and J so smart. They might, you know, get a kid like you . . ."

"So what are you saying Mom? I'm not smart?"
"Well, you're average smart (looks at my face) . . . I mean you're really smart in a right brain kind of way but . . ."
"So you ARE saying that I'm not smart. Geez, Mom . . . "

So as it turns out, I'm not smart in my mother's opinion. Kinda ruins the whole name of the blog . . . any suggestions? Other than "Mymotherdoesn'tthinkI'mreallysmart.blogspot.com", because that's a little long.

Chipmunks Everywhere Felt a Disturbance in the Force

For information about Mr. Cat's killer adventure, see Mom's blog (link in sidebar) . . . he's very proud of himself.

"Again . . . I cannot . . .

comment on a continuing investigation." Or did he say "will not"? The hilarious television I get to watch with summers off. I got to watch that press conference LIVE. Hoo doggie. And after that I picked up some prescriptions and bought some yarn. Lots of excitement.

The prescriptions I filled out of guilt. I'm going to the allergist tomorrow for an appointment (not just the lovely shots) and hadn't filled the prescriptions from the last visit . . . in March. So I have not had any allergy meds in my system since March. The doctors may be a little irked with this type of behavior. They really like it when you follow their advice. So it won't be lying if I've taken the Nasonex for one day. Sure I'm taking my allergy meds. Oh, and I get to see my skull x-ray tomorrow. Nifty! I'm assuming I have a regular skull because the x-ray was also taken in March and they haven't called me . . . and they would call me if I had hideously deformed sinuses, right? Maybe I can bring the x-ray home . . . you know that would go in my living room.

In other exciting news . . . NPR had a whole show on adult ADD and it turns out . . . SURPRISE . . . that I have, like, every one of the "collection" of symptoms. Well, I didn't get in trouble in school. I mean, I was a huge pain in the ass but I don't think anyone called home about it. So from now on EVERYTHING that is remotely wrong in my life can be chalked up to the ADD. (at least that's what the callers on NPR were doing) Messy house = ADD, Any bad relationships = ADD, Crashing the car = ADD . . . I can even use it for an excuse for my muppet hair! Yeah, I wanted to beat my head against the steering wheel as this woman cried to the doctor that she just couldn't hold down a job and her unemployment was running out and her shrink just wouldn't recognize that she had ADD. I know she didn't mean to sound like that on National Public Radio -- in case anyone IS really reading this, but she did.

Also the guest on "The Daily Show" tonight rocked. Very cute and can't wait to go to Barnes and Noble and stand around to read his book . . . er, buy his book . . . called "Spanking the Donkey".

Oh, and my mom . . . in her ultimate hipness . . . now has a blog, cuz all the kids are doin' it these days. But I'm not supposed to mention it or her for that matter, because she IS the director of homeland security (suburban division) and she wants to remain anonymous. So we didn't have this conversation . . . did we internet? So my friend (wink, wink) just started with blogger and wants to learn the joys of ". . . putting pictures and links and all of that stuff . . . I want sounds too. You can put sounds on it right?" Awesome.