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Being Just a Tad Anal With the Details

On September 5, 2010

In the movie Rachel Getting Married the film takes place in this wonderful old house that has hallways filled with old albums and rock posters. The movie is well-done but Wonder Boy and I kept getting distracted by that hallway. And how much we were coveting it and plotting ways to replicate it.

We live in a house built in 1900 with fabulous high ceilings and thick, rich moldings. Our stairway is steep with a sharp turn and lots of wall space just screaming for things to be hung on it. So naturally we knew it would be covered in something related to music.

For the last several years we have been collecting rock posters and framing them all with the same classic, black metal frame so they match, sort of. We have some criteria as to what we will buy and what we won’t because this can be a pricey venture:

We both attended the show or, if only one of us did, that person LOVED it
The concert AND the poster is cool
Not required, but chances are the poster is a sikscreened
Bonus points for posters that are signed and numbered

This hasn’t ruled out as many as you would think. While we’ve had some hung for a while now, I just added the newest batch of five and they look great. (And they should. It took way to long to get those suckers to line up just so, but I was determined. And lord knows if they didn’t line up, my anal retentive self would notice it every day!) Check out all the empty space on the wall, though. We have so many more concerts to attend!

My favorite poster is the one that’s not a rock poster at all. Can you spot it?

Second row, second to the right. That’s the wedding invitation Wonder Boy and I had designed to look just like a rock poster. It fits in perfect and gives us an opportunity to reminisce every time we go up our stairway.

My New Status Symbol

By Kate

On September 4, 2010

In house

I had a birthday not too far back and asked for, among other things, gift cards so I could purchase a KitchenAid Mixer. I was a little hesitant to get one, though I knew it would help it my forays into bread making and cake decorating. I view that mixer as a status symbol of white middle to upper-middle class women all across America. (The true upper class have someone to make their baked goods for them so they don’t need one.)

And yet.

I feel some guilt over my excitement to use this contraption. And to ask for the add-ons for Christmas. I can make my own pasta!!! And to Wonder Boy’s excitement, it has an ice cream maker attachment. Ice cream!

So I will make peace and ogle the new chrome in my kitchen.

One Good Reason to Get a New Job

By Kate

On July 22, 2010

In house, work

In just a few weeks I will be leaving my current job for a new one. One little benefit is getting paid out for all of the vacation I have accrued. All six weeks of it. You read right: six weeks. Well thank goodness! For the past many many many weeks (okay, several months) my shower has been busted and Wonder Boy and I have been getting by using his. It’s not too much hassle, but we can tell his doesn’t have a very long shelf life either. (Many thanks prior home owners!) Today the toilet in my bathroom, the showerless one, busted. And I mean busted good.

And so now we sort of have to tackle the project because it’s just getting plain old ridiculous. But with a little vacation pay out, not so rough. Dual flush toilets, here we come!

Finally, Motivation to Clean More Often

By Kate

On April 20, 2010

In family / friends, house

Wonder Boy and I have been cleaning out our attic. We both sort of hoard thing. I don’t mean in that “I need to be on an intervention television show and there are ten dead cats living in my house but I don’t even know it” sort of way. It’s just that we both have things that we Love. I Love chairs and screen-printed posters. Wonder Boy Loves instruments, especially ones that sound funny.

As time goes on, and we accumulate many a new thing, up to the attic it goes. We always assume that someday the perfect place will present itself for whatever the item it is. It rarely does.

We talk and talk about how we really need to curb the behavior and we never do. The fact is, we invest very little money in the things we squire and we like the hunt for junk and so it goes on. After our recent stint in Costa Rica I think we both became acutely aware, or at least I did, that if we were ever to relocate to someplace awesome, we would need to pare down the things.

For the past several nights we have been up in our attic. Hours go buy as we root through boxes, sorting things into garage sale piles, trash heaps and recycle bins. As is to be expected, there have been some dynamite finds.

Just tonight I found a Christmas card sent to me from one of the train engineers from when I worked at a local amusement park. Based on the average age of the engineers back then, I assume he is long since passed, but seeing that card with the old man handwriting scrawled along the bottom made me smile. I loved the group of retired men who spent their summers teaching little kids around the city to love trains.

Also related to my time at the amusement park was a guide written by two girls I worked with preparing me for the transition from an all-girls high school to a co-ed college. The advice… was ridiculous but funny to read through again.

Wonder Boy’s finds were a little more… prolific. I feel some can’t be shared without his explicit permission, but he found his Alf hand puppet, which is pretty awesome, AND he found his prom tux.