The monkey made me do it

A little green

I spent the last weekend with a definite tinge, for a couple of different reasons.

#1. My nephew is now officially a teenager! His posture has completely disintegrated overnight, he notices brand names faster than any other object feature, and his emotional range seems to be stuck in "whatever". My sister and his mother is only two years older than me. His sister and my niece is also now officially wearing bras. The world is ending. Green = nausea.

#2. My good friend Patty is the very recent owner of a gorgeous Tudor-style brick home right in the "downtown" of my ex-hometown. While that in itself is not the inspiration of the second green (= envy), the house she bought (for next to nothing) is none other than my Dream Home from age 8-17ish! You know, the one I always passed on my way to school and assigned windows to my master bedroom, the guest room, the bathroom with jacuzzi tub. It's got a beautiful design and plenty of potential, though unfortunately its past owners thought that painting the interior brickwork mint green and sponge-painting over that was a good idea (wait, that's three greens... the mint = green of despair, of anger, of borderline going postal at the thought process that resulted in this design monstrosity). I almost cried. AND they dropped the lovely 9' ceilings in the kitchen with a ceiling grid usually only seen in 1980's era office buildings, complete with fluorescent lighting that does nothing for the aqua-painted cabinetry (though to be fair, given the horrible color it didn't really hurt much either). We spent a few hours on Sunday ripping down country-style wallpaper and tearing the doors off her kitchen cabinets, and talking about all her different options for remodeling. It was hard to leave! It's difficult to choose if I am more envious of her house, the deal she got on it, or the fact that she now gets to remodel the thing entirely.

I'm going back down in a couple of weeks to rip out/off more things and make sure the preggers lady doesn't go up any ladders or sniff anything toxic and drool more at her '40-s era woodwork and try to pretend I'm really not the female wanna-be version of Bob Vila (I have nowhere near his tool collection). The only thing keeping me from turning entirely green is the fact that the affordable remodelable dream house is located in a town that I never want to call my home.

But if we got a really big truck...

posted by LadyJay @ 2:11 PM