There's No Place Like Home . . . With Blinders On

Normally, I walk through my house wearing plow-mule blinders. As I wrote in the introduction of If Mama Don’t Laugh, It Ain’t Funny, I keep a well-organized house, with a place for everything . . . in the floor. I hired a housekeeper to save my marriage. On the days that the housekeeper comes, like today, I walk in the door from work, hang the blinders on the coat rack, and enjoy the view. I feel relaxed, calm, like I have time on my hands. So, naturally, I treat myself for her job well done. This afternoon I allowed myself thirty minutes on the sofa watching HGTV. An exuberant designer transformed the bathroom, of a more than willing couple, into a loo one might imagine in a brothel. But the pair that just spent $18,000 on it squealed joyfully over their hot-pink paradise. With my blinders off, because the housekeeper had cleared the visual clutter, I looked around my den and over my shoulder into the living room and around the corner into the guest bedroom, thinking about what snide criticism an HGTV viewer might make about my décor choices. Paint chips, fabric swatches, sofas, ottomans, floor refinishers, furniture arrangements, light fixtures, window treatments, rugs, throw pillows, up-lights, wallpaper, brick-a-brack and knick-knacks tornadoed in my head like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of OZ. Overwhelmed, I reminded myself that I have no money and I have no time. So I turned off the TV, slapped the blinders back on, and repeated, mantra-like, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like . . .” (Lucy Adams is a syndicated columnist and author of If Mama Don’t Laugh, It Ain’t Funny. She lives in Thomson, GA with her husband and their four children.)