I Have Become Old And Boring And I Enjoy Talking About My House

I just spent longer than I care to admit googling a strange combination of words in order to find online a particular product for my downstairs bathroom. That particular product, as it turns out, is called a "vanity top," but I only found this out after feeding into the mocking mouth of the Google searchbar things like "top of sink" and "sink tray" and "sink overlay" and---finally, desperately---"thing that sits on top of the little cupboard in your bathoom that is basically a countertop with a built-in basin." I tell you, whoever Home Depot is paying to do their SEO, they need to give that person a raise: I found that sucker like that.

So yeah, we need a new vanity top. Well, we don't need a new vanity top, I guess, but vanity tops being named as they are, I'm willing to bet they're a little sensitive about their appearance, and the one in our downstairs bathroom has certainly seen better days. This vanity top is like the 1985 Homecoming Queen of vanity tops: she just ain't looking as pretty as she used to. 

Problem is, on the list of things we want to spend money on, a new vanity top for the downstairs bathroom ranks only slightly higher than a double root canal performed without anaesthetic by....hmm, let's say Pete Wentz. (Nothing worse than a root canal without anaesthetic unless it's a root canal without anaesthetic when your dentist has an asymmetrical haircut and skinny jeans.) We've got nothing against vanity tops, of course, and I'm sure they're perfectly lovely things on which to spend your money if you don't need, say, food or water or months of therapy to help you get out of your head the image of a dentist in skinny jeans, but there are just so many other things on which we want to spend our money first.

Like new countertops, for instance, or a new couch. Like retiling the kitchen floor and the kitchen backsplash, which we plan to do ourselves and which we have spent months training for, and by "training," I obviously mean watching the entire oeuvre of free Lowe's how-to videos on the subject. The thing no-one tells you about moving into a new house---or at least the thing no-one told me---is how much of it you're going to want to change. Even if you love the house when you buy it, even if visions of sunset cocktails at the picture window and debauched dinner parties in the eat-in kitchen dance through your head, there is going to come a time---and that time is likely to come somewhere right around the day you move in and then taunt you for the next few months while you try to circumvent it with more sensible ideas like "unpacking" and "prioritizing"---when you look at your kitchen tile and think damn, girl, that is some butt-ugly tile.

Please don't think I'm complaining: I knew going into it that this house needed a little love and I embraced that wholeheartedly---after all, there's nothing I like to sink my teeth into deeper than a project, and so much the better if the project involves making things look cute. But work is a hot bundle of stress at the moment, I've been traveling more than I ever have---at least more than I ever have without a backpack strapped to my back and a dog-eared Lonely Planet poking out the top of it---and sometimes when I get back to my house at night, I want it to be more of a haven and less of a giant work-in-progress.

But look, I'm selling us short: since we moved in, we've actually done quite a lot. We had the rotten 70s linoleum in the downstairs room paved over with glorious shiny hardwood floors, and we painted the matching wood paneling a lovely cool gray. We restored a 1950s steel tanker desk, hung a TV on the wall, ordered a sleeper sofa---which arrives this weekend, hurrah!---and called the whole thing an office. Upstairs, we painted all our kitchen cabinetry white, replaced the handles with sleek brushed nickel, hung a pot rack, changed the hideous light fixtures, pulled down yet more wood paneling, and painted the eat-in kitchen another lovely cool gray. And then, of course, we made a pretty nice bedroom. We've moved the couch around a few times, we've got a carpenter coming to build bookshelves in the living room, and as of this evening, we now know what a damn vanity top is actually called. We're doing okay is what I'm trying to tell myself. We'll get there.

Changing the subject rather, has anyone been watching Real Housewives of DC recently? I think it may actually be my favorite franchise yet, and I say this as a staunch Real Housewives of New York suppporter (though I may soon have to change my tune with Real Housewives of Beverly Hills starting next month.) There's an English woman on it called Cat, and though she is absolutely ghastly and continues---as Sean is fond of pointing out to me---to give the British a bad name with her awful behaviour, she is also compulsively compelling.

And then there's Mary, who is possibly my sole reason for continuing to watch, because I cannot for the life of me work out how old she is. She's been married for twenty-odd years and has five apple-cheeked children, the oldest of whom is 23. And yet she, Mary, doesn't look a day over 35. Is there some super awesome Botox available in DC of which I am not aware? Does she have a portrait in the attic of the Kennedy house, where---we are told---she spent her summers as a kid? Do rich people just age incredibly well? I cannot figure it out, and so I keep watching. But at least I am multi-tasking while I do it. Those vanity tops aren't going to google themselves.