June 14, 2010
I am having an affair
…with this yardsale-purchased breadbox. We have decided to move in together.
May 3, 2010
House Post 1
I just finished reading Megan Daum’s new book Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House, which I’ll 
be reviewing later this week. I wanted to read Daum’s book because I adored her collection of essays My Misspent Youth when I read it last year, but also because she was writing about houses– the ones she loved, the ones she’s loathed, the ones that got away. She writes about roommates, renting, renovations and running away. About MLS obsession, unfortunate apartments, and the experience if purchasing a 
home of her own. I’m obsessed with this stuff, and always have been, and just so you don’t think I’m jumping on the Meghan Daum obsessed with real-estate bandwagon, I offer you the contents of the journal I kept for school in grade 1. Keep in mind that this is most of the entire book, which means that my range of subject matter was awfully limited.
I’ve always loved drawing houses. This is significant because I’ve never much loved drawing anything else, but the basic details of a house were so well within my poor artistic grasp– square windows the t-frames, a door (with maybe a window for a garnish?), obligatory chimney and triangle roof. The possibilities for variation are limitless– curtains, shubbery, smoke in the 
chimney, shutters, a garage, curving path from the door. I loved illustrations of houses 
too in the books I read, particularly those of the whole house at work with the fourth wall removed, and you could see the staircases connecting all the floors, and each room fulfilling its own specific purpose, the life going on within it. (For some reason, the most fascinating houses were those in trees– I remember Brambley Hedge, and the Berenstein Bears in particular, and how I could stare at the cross section drawings of these tree houses and actually “play” with them for hours).
Houses in television are so important– I remain obsessed with the exterior shots of houses that always preceded any 1980s/1990s’ sitcom’s return from commercial break. These houses’ interiors too, and the ways in which they didn’t match the outsides, and the rooms we rarely saw (like the Keatons’ elusive dining room), and how the Facts of Life set was as familiar to me as my own living room. How none of these houses ever had actual foyers, and how staircases and such would get moved around between 
seasons and we just weren’t supposed to notice. Whole TV shows based around domicles– Melrose Place! And houses as extensions of their characters– Casa Walsh, and Dylan’s house (because he lived alone), and Kelly Taylor’s ultra modern nightmare. The layout of the Salingers’ house from Party of Five is indelibly etched upon my mind, and clearly, yes, I spent my teenage years watching terrible television. But still, I wouldn’t turn my nose up at Monica’s apartment from Friends.
But it’s houses in books in particular, which I had to imagine up all by myself. How LM Montgomery wrote about houses– Lantern Hill, Silverbush, Green Gables, Ingleside, New Moon. The English houses– Thornfield Manor, Wuthering Heights, Manderlay, Wildfell Hall. The house Isabel Archer came from in America, with no windows that faced the street, and the Ramsays’ house in To the Lighthouse, Gatsby’s 
house, Dora Rare’s in The Birth House, Howards End (which was ALL about real estate), Rose’s childhood home in Who Do You Think You Are?, Daisy Stone Goodwill’s house in Ottawa where she raised her family in The Stone Diaries.
Unlike Meghan Daum, however, I don’t own my own home. This is partly because paying a mortgage would necessitate me having a job (heaven forbid), but also because I wouldn’t live in my house anymore. Because I really love my house. Daum writes about the struggle of learning to be at home, to live where are you rather than always looking at where to go next. She thinks ownership is necessary to achieve this, but we’ve managed it without a mortgage. The house is home, and we love it because of and in spite of. The neighbourhood, redolent with blooms at this times of year and trees overhead. The tiles in the kitchen, and the how the sun comes through the kitchen door at lunch time, and how you can only run the washer OR the dryer if you don’t want to blow a fuse, and how 
the sun comes into the bedroom in late afternoon, and we can see the CN Tower in the winter (though the summer hides it with trees full of leaves), and my wonderful attic bedroom (which makes me sad only because I know every bedroom I ever have after this one will be a disappointment), and the trees and the breeze that keep us cool in the summer, and the huge living room windows, and how Harriet’s door doesn’t shut, and the backwards kitchen taps, and our en-suite that doesn’t have a door, and the deck and our fire escape, and the fireplace, and the wide hallway, the squirrels in the attic and the mice under the floor. I used to think that I wanted to buy a house, but then realized what I really wanted was a new apartment, and after two years in this one, I’ve still got no urge to go.
February 8, 2010
Furnishing a room
Our house is currently in a state of upheaval as we begin the process of moving the baby into her own room. We’ve got a faint hope that it might help her sleep better, and after eight months of enjoying having her close, we want our room back. And no doubt she’ll be joining us there most nights anyway (and yay for reluctant co-sleeping, which is much better than being awake).
Baby will be moving into the spare-room/ office/ library, however, so the books have had to migrate living-room-ward. Which at first I was sad about, that the books would be losing a room of their own, but now having them out in the world again, I realize that I’ve missed them. How little I visited our library, unless I had a reason to, and how nice the spines are just to stare at, and the journeys they could take me on from my seat here in the gliding chair.
And I realize that books have been missing from this room all along. It’s so nice to be back among them. The aesthetic effect of their various colours and heights. How the walls were empty before, and the floor just too wide, and how the built-in shelf beside the fireplace was wasted before now. It’s true, they do– they furnish a room! And joyfully, because televisions don’t, we’re getting rid of ours, so just excuse the focal point in the photo in the meantime.
December 17, 2009
Our Menagerie
This morning at the library, I was excited to find a book called Animals in My House. “Finally,” I thought, “a book that Harriet will be able to relate to.” How disappointed was I then, when I discovered the book was about domestic animals, exclusively pets? And does anybody know a book we can use to help explain to our daughter the mice under the floors, the squirrel in the wall, spiders on the bathroom ceiling and that family of raccoons outside the door? Or is this just a board book begging to be written?
May 22, 2009
Yellow House
Our house is being painted. Anyone who knows our house will also know that this is very good news. That no longer will we live in the shabby blue house, but in the freshly painted yellow one. I think this counts as upward mobility. We are very excited, and glad Baby won’t have to be embarrassed at its premises. We’re also getting a great deal on the painting (ie we’re renters, and so someone else is getting the bill). The only downside is that the last few days I’ve had to endure such disconcerting sights as this one.
December 16, 2008
Postal Motherlode
Today we arrived home to a bundle on the doorstep– ten (10!) Christmas cards, all for us. It was as good as Christmas morning, really, and we opened them one-by-one, delighting. And then had to add a second string to our fireplace display, which is quite remarkable for one day’s pickings. Oh, for the love of December and perpetual post.
We are also happy this year to have a fireplace at all, though of course hanging our stockings on the bookcase was never a bad thing, but there is a certain authenticity here at the new house, even if the fireplace is a wee bit bricked up and a storage space for magazines. We trust Santa will find his way…
August 20, 2008
Raise High
And now I bring you to the end of the “new house” tour, as our bedroom has been a painted and is now fit for public viewing. So here it is, in all its afternoon glory, with the balcony door wide open to some more light in. The roof beams raised high, Carpenters, and it’s wonderful. (The walls were mauve before– can you imagine anything more awful? Well, only my formerly brown hallway.)
We love it. We also love that somebody else painted it and that he did an impeccable job in one day. There is something to be said for professionals, and he doesn’t even appear to have dripped paint on the rug (or in my hair). So apparently you can spell paint without pain, or at least without my pain. The secret is a chequebook hmmm. Man, do I ever love adulthood. I think I’ll stick with it for a while.
July 19, 2008
A return to order
Returning my books to their freshly painted shelves last evening was as satisfying as popping bubble wrap, or tweezing out an ingrown hair. I’d had to resist the urge to get it all done earlier, before the paint was surely dry, exercising my sorely underused sensibility muscle. Telling myself over and over, it is hot and humid, shelves could be sticky, books could get stuck= disaster. But it’s finished now, books are home. The room is fresh and bright, and the built-in shelves are no longer dingy grey. Though we do have a unique problem here of too many shelves, and the collection looks piddly. But still lovely, standing at attention and alphabetized for your pleasure…
July 14, 2008
Bibliochaos
The scene at right indicates a house in chaos, indeed. The room where the books live is being painted (walls, trim and built-in shelving). It’s a big job, and so the books have sought safe harbour under the stairs (in alphabetized stacks, of course). So far I’ve not had to dig through in search of anything, though something will come up over the next few days, inevitably. The very best thing about the redec being that I’ll be able to post a picture of my library afterwards, which I haven’t done up until now because it was horrible.
This weekend was brilliant. We had four (4!) parties to attend, and were hosted marvelously, had such a wonderful time with friends. Today’s was even in suburbia, and we got to swim in a pool– such a treat. I’m now reading Marilynne Robinson’s new novel Home, about to curl up somewhere comfortable and read the very end. If this book is something you’ve been waiting for, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
