Scaling Down

I bought this book, Scaling Down: Living Large in a smaller space. It’s about getting rid of the clutter and the basic moral is, if you don’t need it and don’t love it, get rid of it. It asks how many towels do you really need? How many coffee mugs? Really, a household only needs one can opener, and if you have a clutter-free kitchen, odds are you’ll know where it is when you need it.

I was so inspired I told my mother she could throw everything out of the drawers in my teenage bedroom, which is pretty easy to say when I’m not looking right at the autographed pictures of soap stars from their fan clubs.

All week I’ve been waiting for this day, when Rob would be at work for 12 hours and I could stealthily go through the apartment, throwing away all the things I decided he didn’t love or need. I should note that the book doesn’t recommend this. It says that you should worry about your own things and perhaps your partner will be inspired by your newfound habits.

I haven’t explained the Need/Love litmus test to him, thinking I could save that for a moment when we’re packing and he’s about to insist that the styrofoam gargoyle come with us to our new house. Rob, do you need this styrofoam gargoyle? Do you love it?

Of course I understand that yes, he will tell me he loves every single Elektra action figure and poster, and The Crow memorabilia that he hasn’t taken out of the boxes. I wouldn’t dream of touching those.

Last night we were watching something on TiVo — I can’t remember what. He has a fake tree that obscures part of the TV from certain angles. I asked, “What do you think of that tree?” He said, “Yeah, it’s annoying.”

I said, “Great, so it’s not coming with us?”

And he said, “What? No, I love that tree. I really love it.”

Whoa, OK then, I guess it comes with.

This morning, I got started on my mission before he left. I told him I was getting rid of the stack of magazines on the kitchen floor, which I had asked him to do something about before my mom visited in April. I was willing to keep the Playboys with Jenny McCarthy and Cindy Crawford on the covers, but I knew he was never going to read all the old photography magazines (technology has changed) or old Entertainment Weeklies from the late 1990s (with pictures of the hunks from ER, for example).

He said, “If it means that much to you, you can do it, but it goes against everything I believe in.”

Awww.

So I compromised and saved the “Best of” Entertainment Weeklies from 1996 on.

My next step is to throw away things I don’t think he will even miss. I can’t see him saying, “Whatever happened to my Sea Monkey habitat?”

But he might miss the styrofoam gargoyle.

A cross between Sheryl Crow and Priscilla Presley

Myheritage.com is so worth the free registration. You can upload pictures and it will match your face with the celebrities you most resemble.

I tried two pics and Sheryl Crow and Priscilla Presley were the first matches that came up. The computer was unable to recognize me as a human when I tried a picture of me wearing glasses.

Rob was George Clooney when he smiled and Ben Stiller when he didn’t. But then I scrolled through other close matches and Osama bin Laden and some even less attractive people popped up.

Online shopping

So I’ve picked out a house. And found a new iguana to adopt.

The next item on my To Do list is to find a dog. Mind you, we haven’t gotten a response to our offer yet, and we’ll probably have to fence the yard before adopting a guard dog, but it’s never too soon to narrow down one’s preferences.

I’m liking Rottweiler-Lab mixes. Some fascist Rottweiler online forums were lamenting the destruction of the species via this form of outbreeding, lambasting a poster who innocently asked if anyone knew a Rott-Lab breeder.

…Why would anyone breed Labs and Rotts on purpose? Are they so stupid as to think it would result in Rottweileresque guard qualities with a friendly Labrador disposition? It just as easily could create a vicious, food-obsessed monstrosity…

Yeah, I just think their heads are a little cuter than your garden-variety Rottweiler. I’m keeping an open mind, but I’m attracted to black dogs with brown muzzles and eyebrows.

Grandma Sally

My grandmother had an e-mail account and wore Armani. She bequeathed Harry Winston diamonds to her grandchildren months before her death, so that she saw one used to celebrate a marriage and heard plans for another to be used in a non-engagement ring. (Mine)

I’m sad that she didn’t live to her 95th birthday and that she wasn’t surrounded by loved ones when she died on Saturday. But I believe that she was ready to go,* and it sounds like she slipped away peacefully and with grace.

We’ll miss her.

*Rob says this is because she had an opportunity to ask him if he ever felt like hitting me. (He said no.) I’m happy that they got to meet each other.

The Office and the Home

Last night, with Rob crashed out on the living room floor and “So You Think You Can Dance” concluded, I browsed some of the selections TiVo recorded with my interests in mind.

One of these was The Office, an episode in which Steve Carrell became a homeowner. He excitedly left work for the final walk-through on his condo and signing of the closing papers. As he is about to sign, he learns that his mortgage is not a 10-year, but a 30-year. (Clearly he has misunderstood.) He starts to panic. The ceiling seems lower than it did when he was there a week earlier. Is this even the same unit they showed him? Is he going to have to rent the extra bedroom to his weird employee?

Oh, how I related. I realized with our first house-elect that when you initially fall for a house, everything seems perfect. Once you think you’re committed to buying it, you realize that there are a few stains on the carpet, holes in the wall and the guest bedroom smells like Guinea pig.

We decided against that house, for a few reasons. One being that the lovely gravel driveway leading to the lovely shop was not on that property, but belonged to an elderly neighbor woman who was happy to let people use it right now, but someday, she might want to put up a fence and sell her property–although she has no plans to now, and doesn’t even have the money to put up said fence.

My break-up process was: first, a willingness to do whatever was necessary to make it work, followed by feeling so completely over the house that even if it came crawling back I didn’t want it anymore. Rob felt that the house owed us an explanation…but has since moved on.

Now we’re planning to buy a house two doors down from the Bad House. Yippee. Its kitchen doesn’t need remodeling and it has four, count ’em, four bedrooms.

And the address is my brother’s birthday: 1021.

The other plot on The Office also hit home. Many times, I’ve noted that most people don’t actually do work for the full eight hours they are at work. The joke on The Office is that the workers don’t do any work. My problem is that I feel guilty when there isn’t any work to do, because I think surely there is work somewhere that needs doing and if I could just figure out what it is, I could do it. Instead, I should be pleased with myself (and so should my employers) that I do all the work there is to be done until there is no more work, and while I’m blogging and reading celebrity gossip*, I’m actually poised and ready to jump on any work that comes my way.

*This blogging and reading of gossip is different than the e-mailing and house-shopping that I do while simultaneously doing work. Those tasks are necessary, because the work needs to marinates on my desk and in my computer before it can be completed.

Girl crush

For the record, I found Angelina Jolie positively captivating on Anderson Cooper last night. I loved her winged eyeliner and thought she had on just the right amount of makeup. And I feel that I learned a lot about refugees around the world. Heart-wrenching.

I did however, find it annoying that they at least thrice replayed the same clip that began with her saying to Anderson, “You know this,” and then referred to breast-feeding. Mostly because each time, I thought, “Does she keep telling Anderson Cooper what he knows before she answers his question?”

Still, the Gawker recap is hi-larious.

Trying times

Rob and I have stopped fighting about which Realtor is less incompetent and saw some houses yesterday that might do.

One is hideous from top to bottom, but in a great location. I’ve been watching several consecutive hours of HGTV every weekend, so I’m comfortable with my ability to knock out walls and install an entirely new kitchen. The paint inside that one isn’t bad, but the exterior is a dusky mint green, which looks fluorescent in pictures.

It’s across from live horses and has a large yard for a dog and a 1,600-square-foot shop. I think Rob doesn’t like it so much because he can’t see what it has the potential to become. But I was getting excited about the possibilities as I lay awake last night.

The other place, of which Rob said “I like almost everything about it,” is funky with a capital Fuh. Has sort of a bay view (with the freeway in the foreground), and is made of concrete bricks (is there any other kind?), which give texture to the inside walls. The kitchen cabinets are painted silver (to match the refrigerator that may or may not be staying) with white doors. The exterior is an army green, which must be repainted indigo if we are to live there. Many of the interior rooms are varying shades of bile and vomit green.

The master bedroom here is an add-on on stilts. We think we can enclose the carport and build a shop/martial arts studio underneath, connected to the basement.

Stand by for the word from architect and city planner types…

To reiterate

I cannot stop looking at real estate listings online.

Am getting through it with the help of a Sobe Fuerte – mango-passionfruit drink with guarana, yerba mate and jamaica (also known as hibiscus). That’s 325 calories well spent.

New tack

Have shifted gears and am looking for cheapo houses in excellent locations that we can turn into our dream home/studio.

It’s actually something of an obsession. Or a compulsion. Or both.