The Sofa and the Kindle

"I'm not a literary genius...I was not an orphan. I have never blown anyone for coke or let other people do coke off any part of my body. I have never struggled with addiction and I was never molested. Tragically, my life has only been moderately fucked up. I'm not writing this book to share wisdom or to inspire people." 
 -- Sarah Silverman, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee

I am seventeen percent of the way through Sarah Silverman's new book on my new (to me) Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Free 3G, 6" Display, White - 2nd Generation. I think that's right.

Today was a big, big day in that I was lovingly handed down two of my favorite friends' two most cherished possessions. One handed down his kindle, and one handed down her Arhaus sofa (the kind with the down cushions that you squish into). They both seemed a little wistful to see these things go, but I reassured them that this is an Open Adoption. I'll send pictures. They can visit any time they want, confident in the knowledge that these treasures have a home just as loving and appreciative as their own. They won't drive by and see the kindle tied up in the yard, or the sofa sitting on the front porch. 

My quest for the perfect sofa has been in overdrive since I moved last Spring, because I refused to move the old one into the new place. There wasn't anything wrong with it, but I stopped liking it, and I refused to move it.

This has meant a long summer of guests literally sitting on the floor (utterly without complaint...at least not to my face), but I have stuck to my guns. The Big Ass Chair seats two at the most -- and even that requires a certain romantic commitment... not to mention an embrace of certain principles of yoga.

The rule is if I don't love it, it can't live here. I'm not all snooty about it -- I'm happy to go without until the right thing presents itself. I have made one exception for a lamp I like that has an ugly shade, because it seemed a little extreme to light the living room with a bare ass bulb. I can picture the shade I want, but I haven't found it yet.

My bud Ian says my problem is champagne tastes on a beer budget -- and that's part of it -- but that isn't precisely true. I just have very, very specific taste, which I have a very difficult time articulating. I wasn't born speaking Dwell Magazine, I'm learning the vocabulary one painstaking mistake at a time. For a long time when I tried to describe "contemporary," I was saying "modern," and ended up with some terrible Jetsonian errors.

Harriette in her Kitchen

I do know my friend Harriette's house in the country (our bleugrass Hamptons) is perfect, so at least she gives me a jumping-off point, but it's a point of inspiration-only. I know her sofa is a magnificent B & B Italia and that if I had it, the general response would not be "wow!" (as it is when you see Harriette's), but rather "who does she think she's kidding?" It's Art, and I'm not sure I can pull off a room where you sit on the Art.

Luckily, I can read all about it in all the Design Magazines I plan to subscribe to on the new Kindle.

Today is the first time I ever touched one, and yes, I do realize I am several years late to the party. I wasn't boycotting them -- as some writers do -- it was just on the list of things I hadn't gotten around to. I've never had a "sky is falling" philosophical opposition to them "replacing" books. I won't be hauling the kindle to book club. There are books I want to keep and physically annotate and look at on my shelves so I can go back to them over and over again, but honestly, not all that many. I've never been much of a book hoarder.

I am, however, both a compulsive reader, and an insanely fast one. On any given weekend, I can power through a half dozen new releases that have piled up on my desk during the week. If they're good, I try to force myself to slow down because I want to make them last, but I never can. Factor in the insomnia and I constantly run out of things to read in the middle of the night, long after the bookstores are closed and amazon isn't shipping.

The kindle strikes me as a perfect remedy for that. The new Sarah Silverman is a good example. She is way, way too scatological for my taste in humor. Sometimes I think she's funny, and sometimes a little repulsive. I wouldn't take down a tree for this book, but I am happy to read it. Midway through, I did have to text Michael and ask him if the Kindle lit up, or if I was expected to turn on the lamp like a goddamn animal. I can see myself reading it by kerosene during the next Ice Storm.

I am not an early adopter (remember, I insisted writers bring me their stories on disk for years because their stupid attachments wouldn't open and I really didn't see "that whole email thing catching on"), but I'm not a Luddite either. My cousin and I had a long talk yesterday where I explained to him the fax machines of yore with the curly paper, and he made fun of the days when I tied my columns to the ankles of carrier pigeons and dispatched them throughout the city.

Disdain for technology is a luxury for folks way higher up the literary food chain than I am. It's fine to adore Wendell Berry and all, but it's equally fine to remember that his lovely wife types all his manuscripts. I don't have a wife. I have facebook. And if somebody shows me something that makes my life easier and better, I am happy to take them up on it. I love information and I love knowledge (two different things, I realize) and I'm glad to improve my access to both.

As I was typing this, however, I got a voicemail from my BFF that says, "I am calling you on the Gmail."  She said I could call her back on it too. I have no idea what that means, but apparently, somebody has now replaced telephones. Perhaps she will read this blog crudely fashioned from twigs and berries and call me back. Last Thanksgiving, I talked to her on The Skype while she was in Siberia, so if she says phones are over, we'd best believe her.

Between you and me, I suspect It's Like Havin' a Dove Field.

The Tao of Craigslist

I hate my old sofa. It's a good sofa; it probably has a million years of wear left in it, I just don't like it anymore. It was my first grown-up furniture purchase, about 20-some years ago. Up until then, I furnished everything via the design school of "Want this?" which meant my apartment was where all the relatives' cast-offs went to die. So buying the sofa was a big deal -- a proud moment.

At the time, I liked antiques. About 15 years ago, my taste shifted to contemporary. Not crazy-modern, just something you'd see in Dwell or Metropolitan Home (before it went out of business), as opposed to say Southern Living (not that there's anything wrong with that). It's hard to find something simultaneously insanely stylish, dog-resistant, and movie-night-comfortable. This is for the TV room (the living room furniture can afford to just look pretty -- but the TV room is where everybody hangs out most...after the Kitchen.) I've been actively shopping for this dream sofa for at least a decade, but I haven't been able to commit. It's like porn, I can't define it -- but I'll know it when I see it.

This Graham and Green number is nice, for example -- and it'd be great for the parlor -- but this isn't how I dress to lie around and read books in Howard the Home Theater. Also, it was ID'd as a sofa, but I'm pretty sure it's a loveseat, or else she's a GIANT. Although as demonstrated by the BigAssChair purchase, I clearly don't know the difference between the two.

I finally realized that as long as I kept the old, loathed sofa, the law of inertia would keep me from getting a new one. (Or as my Mom put it, I needed to "fung the shway" in this place -- nothing new comes in til something old goes out -- not that she would approve of getting a new sofa when there's still life in the old one.) Maybe sitting on the cold wood floors would be a motivator. So my pals Phoef and Dave dragged the old sofa to the office, and then I posted it on craigslist. (I just saw on the news where somebody got killed when a robber came to his house to buy his craigslist diamond ring -- which is where I feel compelled to point out: I do not have any diamond anything. I don't even have a sofa for chrissake. Keep it movin' pal...nothing to see here.)

So far: not one nibble. Nobody seems to want my old sofa (though it has come in handy a few times at the office, and that will probably end up being its permanent home).

I headed over to craigslist this morning to check out my competition, and I was embarrassed I hadn't done a better job of "selling" it.  Because every sofa (but mine) has a story.

One guy writes elaborately, in defense of his sectional, "I am recently divorced and honestly [would]  just rather have a futon for my place. No other reason I am getting rid of them." (I find myself wondering if he's protesting a little too much? What are the "other reasons" someone might infer? Somebody died on it? Somebody was born on it? Something worse?)

Another owner of a "nice sleeper" discloses,  "There is one small burn hole on the left arm of the sofa but we do not smoke in the house. It's really no big deal." (Points for the correct spelling of It's, but that seems a little antagonistic -- it's probably up to the buyer to determine whether or not burn-holes and smoke damage are "a big deal.") They add, "Also, we have dogs so the couch will need to be vacuumed." OK, I can see that (but I do wonder why they don't just vacuum it themselves?)  They close helpfully with, "The color in the picture looks a little weird but it's just the lighting and the fact that it was taken with a cell phone camera."

Apparently, no one's satisfied with the quality of their cell. Another ad points out, "The pictures make the chairs look worn down. They are not worn, it's just the type of fabric. Kind of like what suede does when brushed different ways?" Fair enough.

The chairs look pretty good actually.

But I wouldn't give $100 bucks for 'em. 

Oh. Oh. Domino.

Moving is a very socially uncomfortable process for me -- standing around giving instructions while others conduct manual labor might sound like something a lot of people enjoy, but in reality, it's bothered me ever since college, where we were surrounded by what was known as GrayArmy. They were the people who ran the grounds and buildings and facilities, and always seemed just one sorority bitch away from putting our heads on pikes and mounting them on the Flame.

Half of this morning's moving crew liked me; half didn't. I dispensed cold beverages, and tried to be appropriately appreciative. I had clearly color coded and labeled all the furniture according to room and position, with corresponding labels on the other end. I had also had 17 or so friends deliver multiple truckloads in recent weeks, thereby completing about 40 percent of their work before today's crew even showed up. They made a lot of loud noises and comments suggesting they really, really did not like the process of lifting heavy things and putting them elsewhere -- which suggests to me that maybe they are in the wrong line of work. They brought their own music and listened loudly to "Domino" (with an occasional accompanying Motown-like shuffle.) I hate that song. It seemed to cheer them, but in retrospect, I should've considered it a portent.

Nonethless, I tipped them extravagantly and thanked them profusely (under nothing more than the general theory than I sure didn't wanna do their job), and as they drove off into the sunset, there was a really, really loud snapping sound at the end of the driveway. My pal Scott yelled out from the living room, "Uhhhh, I think you might wanna check on your boys."

"Yeah, how come they're MY boys whenever they've done something bad?" I asked.

A hasty jaunt to the curb, where a small crowd was gathering, revealed that they'd just taken out utilities to the block with the top of their truck. There were downed wires everywhere, which they tried to remedy by poking at them with a collapsible shower rod they'd retrieved from my downstairs bath. In a thunderstorm. It ended better than you might think, with them at least extricating the vehicle before anyone got killed or electrocuted. They left the severed wires just lying around.

I called their "Boss" who is really just an anonymous, androgynous  person named "Chris" who answers the phones and who said s/he'd "get right on it."

While I have never been less confident in my life that someone was going to "get right on" something, a few minutes later, the Cable Guy pulled up outside. I asked if he was there to transfer my cable and wi-fi to the new address (as scheduled), or to repair the lines we'd just yanked out of the poles? He said, "Honey, I'm here to do whatever you need me to do, and I won't leave til I'm done." I felt like I should've blown him on principle just for saying that, but it would have been hard to come up with an encore two hours later when he was STILL up a tree in my yard re-building the neighborhood lines. (This was after I had to walk home -- to the old home --  in the rain to fetch a power strip for my modem, since my car was trapped by live wires. There's no possible way to convey how pitiful an image it truly was.)

The guy got in, got out, and he left me two new remotes (I'd mentioned mine had grown tiresome and outdated).

By the time the fascist gas company rolled in at 8:30 at night, I was handing out lollipops and ass-kickins and I was fresh outta lollipops. They were the one utility that gave me explicit instructions reiterating that if I did not answer the phone when they called, I would have to reschedule their inspection for another day -- no hot water, no stove, etc. til they got their inspection in. After an all-day wait, he called the first time at 7 to say he was on his way, and we all trooped to the front porch where he couldn't miss us -- and then called back at 7:30 to say he had to take an "emergency" call and I should plan on being home the rest of the evening.

Once he arrived, of course, he promptly red-tagged the furnace (here's a tip: don't ever let the gas company into your house if you can avoid it -- like all monopolies, they will eff with you at least partly because they can). Luckily, I'm not someone who uses a furnace much, even in the winter, so I don't really care when the "drip leg" gets fixed" and the dryer hose gets "caulked." By then, my proletarian sensibilities had dimmed. I didn't even feel sorry for him when he said, before heading under the house to inspect the furnace, "call somebody if I'm not out in an hour."

I just said, "they don't call it a crawlspace for nothin' buddy."

The Voice of Color

I am not the "Voice of Color," but it does now follow me on Twitter. They tagged me yesterday in this post, "@RealityTrucks Uses PPG Porter Paint & NO other! http://is.gd/aUzwO & has color goals in mind before painting. We're swooning! Thanks :)" 

I think they'll be disappointed (much like all the high-style design outfits that followed me after I wrote so frequently about Dwell Magazine -- clearly having no idea the shame I was capable of accidentally wreaking -- it being entirely true that I've based many of my palettes largely on Adrien Lyne movies. Or as one of my DesignGays put it, "I'm not sure 'Bravery' is the word we're going for here.")

"Voice of Color" was referring to a recent blog where I did, in fact say I am a Porter Girl (although I do use Ralph Lauren and other lines as color-whores. Everyone knows I don't feel like a house is a home until the first coat of Glyptek White Umber has been applied to the trim. And I don't want to be...untoward... but yeah, I admit I had a little spring in my step all day just knowing my "color goals" had made a Search Engine Optimizer swoon -- complete with an emoticon no less. (It is much better than all the Lenten entreaties/entweeties begging me not to bring certain industries crashing to their knees, so to speak, depending on what I decided to give up for Lent.)

I think it's pretty clear that this is a non-commercial blog, but I felt compelled to promptly post on the blog's facebook fan page (which never links correctly here, so consider that a non-endorsement) that Porter Paint did not pay me to say that (I am sure if they had paid me, they might have asked me to phrase things differently), while adding (in what could be construed as a disgruntled tone) that I didn't even get any free paint from them either. (Where's the love?) Just like none of us ever got any free boxed wine after the famous Bandit boxed wine blog which I wrote right after all the FTC disclosure notices made the news, even though I had never been a recipient of what the NYT characterized as "the days of an unimpeded flow of giveaways," which were evidently grinding to a close.

But no,  my Porter-commitment is based on years of hard-won experience and is one of those things in life I just expect everyone to treat as if it's now established empirical fact, and is neither a matter of opinion, nor up for debate, i.e., Coke is better than Pepsi. It's just true. I was raised in a Pepsi household. As soon as I grew up (and realized I was free to go), I moved out, and switched to Coke. I also grew up in a household that painted every few years, but only ever in May, after the Sears Annual Memorial Day Paint Sale. I grew up, and painted my first apartment one Memorial Day weekend, and that was my last trip to Sears.

My understanding is that "monetizing" frequently leads to "tacky," and while I never say never to selling out (if anybody ever asked dammit, and the price was right), I think I can safely avoid the temptation as long as I can resist 17 cents a month for the privilege of pop-ups like this one turning up in the margins.

So, to this day, I remain uncompensated by Ambien, Bacon, or Sam Shepard, which shocks (shocks) me, and to that I would add, Man, I can't even get arrested at Hermes (...except for the fact that, somehow...I feel sure I could. If they locked Oprah out, prison is probably the least they have in store for me.

Another Day's Wear

Because I didn't get to go to the Hermes sample sale this past weekend, I spent (instead) some quality alone time with their site --- trying to discern the difference between "charitable" scarves and "glam" scarves.  I had just found one with a deck of cards on it and was looking for the 'Ace' when I was interrupted by a text from Linda... who wanted to know what I was doing... and then didn't understand the answer. Her philosophy of fashion, decor, and design, is, and always has been "you know me: it's just another day's wear." (She frequently laments the fact that there's no such thing as Garanimals for Grownups.)

So her text, on the way to pick me up, said "I'd like to run in and look at wall colors in your old place as a reference at my new house." (She currently has quite the manse in the campus-ghetto, but is returning to her suburban roots.) It is entirely possible she was looking for a reference of what not to do.

I helpfully responded, "if you'll tell me what your color goals are, I can probably help. Ridgeway will probably need a different palette than traditional downtown."

I could hear her laughing, even though it was just a text. Her answer was, "Color goals?!! Paint. On. Walls. = Another. Day's. Wear."

How anyone can paint without color goals is beyond me.  Should the room soothe? Relax? Energize? Is the space romantic or is it cozy? Is it for entertaining or.... "enterTAINing?" Expansive, or intimate?

By the time she showed up, I had assembled several sample boards in varying finishes, the entire Ralph Lauren palette (from "modern light" to "urban loft."), swatches, and paint chips -- along with the stern admonition that we only use Porter Paint, never any other. Ralph Lauren and Martha Stewart are our color whores, but we buy Porter paint.

I made her evaluate the subtle sophisication of Lichen Boulder over the earthen hues of frosted hawthorn. She loves the "mercer," "urban living," and "howard" rooms I'm using from the urban loft palette.... but I explained to her she has to walk before she can run. She can have a little jute...a dash of chi.... and a little willow to start. But that's it.

We'll just have to see how she handles that.

Then I told her not to come back till she had established some goals.

And a mission statement.

Harriette's Kitchen

Ian took this photo in Harriette's Kitchen this weekend. Harriette has my dream kitchen, and my dream house -- which she and her late husband designed and built around a subzero and viking stove they found at an Auction. Her house looks like it would be more at home in Seattle than here, and would fit right in on the pages of Dwell Magazine.

If she were anybody else, I'd probably be consumed with bitter, bitter envy -- but Harriette is who I want to be when (and if) I grow up, and a picture here and there just reminds me it's good to have goals.

I'm posting a few more photos I took on the way to their place in the woods in a driving rain during this past Fall's Flood Season. High Water is on my list of phobias (I can't help but flash on poor 1970s anchorwoman Jessica Savitch drowning in her car, in a ditch, with her dog, who died too), but if you're lucky enough to get invited to The Woods, you go.  (You just don't watch The Strangers for awhile after you get back.)

The pictures don't do it justice. (Well, my pictures don't anyway. But I'm working on my photography skills -- for which Chef Tom has prescribed thyroid medication, because clearly, I come down with the shakes everytime I'm behind the lens.)