Picture(s) of the Day

Scheherazade in Blue Jeans

freelance alchemist

28th-Jun-2007 09:19 am

This is my parents' house. I have photographed it so you can see how eerily like a model house it is. It *really* does not look like anyone actually lives there.

In sharp contrast to my house, with its walls of books and its cluttered tables.

Anyway.

This is what I refer to as the Parlor. This is the room no one's allowed to enter. Seriously. If there are footprints in the vacuum tracks, Mom wigs out.

The living room. With its painfully coordinated pillows, purchased-in-a-lot Florida Art, and neat stacks of books that no one has ever read.

The always-spotless kitchen, with Corian counters... the sink is white Corian. So any bit of spill or spatter shows up. My mother must clean her sink several times a day to keep it pristine.

The never-used dining room with its ginormous marble table. I still maintain that this is the stone table they killed Aslan on, imported from Narnia.

My childhood room, with all signs of my childhood painted over. It's now Elayna's room every summer. It does not remain this tidy for long. Continuing issue: there is no bookcase. There's that stupid wicker thing that holds little figurines. But no bookcase. I see this as a problem. My parents do not. Next time I'm here, I'm getting a cheapass bookcase from Target and building it my damn self.

The backyard. They put the white fence up when I had Elayna, to make it harder for her to accidentally wander into the pool. This is the one part of the house that I like, the pool and yard and lake.

Tags:pictures
Mood:bitchy
Music:Jonathan Coulton - Code Monkey

Comments

28th-Jun-2007 01:41 pm (UTC)

dabroots

Wow. Very manicured. My ex's family home had one room of that sort, never used, and it was the so-called "living room" with expensive furniture, a glass-fronted curio cabinet, etc.

28th-Jun-2007 01:49 pm (UTC) - It's so sterile...

kenakari

This makes me want to weep. All that space not being used - and how the heck can anyone keep a house that big so empty and tidy? Light coloured furniture and carpets wouldn't last five minutes in my house even if I didn't have a kid.

28th-Jun-2007 02:23 pm (UTC) - Re: It's so sterile...

shadesong

Every available wall in my house has a full bookcase; every available flat surface has Stuff - comics statues, little dishes full of interesting things, et cetera. I really need to take pictures.

28th-Jun-2007 01:49 pm (UTC) - "It's very beautiful, and very cold, and you're not allowed to touch anything."

chris_walsh

Yes, I'm flashing back on Cameron's house.

I still maintain that this is the stone table they killed Aslan on, imported from Narnia.

Heh. Hee, even.

28th-Jun-2007 01:52 pm (UTC) - Re: "It's very beautiful, and very cold, and you're not allowed to touch anything."

chris_walsh

Oh, and I've never understood adding white furnishings and white fixtures to already-overwhelmingly-white places. I honestly don't feel white is a natural color to surround yourself with in your home. To me it's, at best, a neutral starter color, or a background on which to put up stuff with more varied colors.

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28th-Jun-2007 01:52 pm (UTC)

zitronenhai

So much WHITE!

28th-Jun-2007 02:00 pm (UTC)

merrick42

...and you have the crayons in your icon, the power, to re-decorate!

28th-Jun-2007 01:52 pm (UTC)

dindin

It looks like a very neat, somewhat white, house to me. My mom keeps an immaculate house, also - she's just a neat freak.

I moved out of my childhood home the day after I graduated high school, a few months after my dad had moved out. You still have your childhood home.

28th-Jun-2007 02:21 pm (UTC)

shadesong

Eh, not really... when I think "childhood home", I think the one before this one. We moved here when I was 12, and I was mostly out of the house from age 14 on up.

My childhood home had a 70s-trendy sunken living room - "the pit" - and awesome neighbors. And two cool playgrounds within walking distance. *wistful sigh* The whole area's changed...

28th-Jun-2007 01:59 pm (UTC)

merrick42

The idea of the sitting room or parlor has always, I don't know, unnerved me. I don't know if that's the correct word. A couple of friends of mine have relatives in Alabama and both have related stories of being yelled at and ejected from those rooms when they've tried to go in, because everything must look and be PERFECT! for guests when they arrive. Its interesting, and freaky, tracking the attitudes of people who come from (or yearn to) areas with rigid economic and/or social structures.

28th-Jun-2007 03:02 pm (UTC)

spoothbrush

I don't know if it's *always* freaky... my parents had a "living room" that we had to either Be On Our Best Behavior or Stay Out Of... in their case, it wasn't so much about Keeping It Perfect For Guests as Having One Room Where You Don't Have To Worry About Stepping On Lego. By the time we were in high school, it was where we'd go to be quiet and read, but when we were younger the occasions when we spent time in the Living Room doing things like afternoon tea were special family days that I really remember fondly.

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28th-Jun-2007 02:05 pm (UTC)

themaskmaker

Being a cook, of course, the first thing I notice is the stove. The smooth-top stove was invented for people who prefer cleanliness to good food. No, you can't get any little crumbs in the burner wells with a stove like that, but you also have to use special pans so you don't scratch the smooth surface. No cast iron. No heavy-duty pans of any sort.

28th-Jun-2007 02:15 pm (UTC)

shadesong

Yeah. We love our Boston kitchen - a nice gas stove, and enough counter space for three people to cook/do food prep without getting in each other's way.

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28th-Jun-2007 02:06 pm (UTC)

raptorgirl

Honestly, I think I'd lose it if I had to live there. It's so sterile.

28th-Jun-2007 02:18 pm (UTC)

shadesong

I lose it just visiting.

28th-Jun-2007 02:12 pm (UTC)

malinaldarose

Ya know...if your mum walked into my house, she'd die on the spot. One walks into the laundry room with the crown molding torn down, the messy coat rack, the dogs' water bowls, and the disgustingly filthy floor where we feed the dogs -- where they sit and drool over their food bowls. It's utterly impossible to keep that floor clean, so I don't even try. And then there's the kitchen, with another drool spot near the basement door (we keep the dog food in the basement and carry the bowls down there to fill them). And I have a '70s wall-to-wall shag carpet in my living room, which is frayed, with many, many torn loops. Oh, and of course, no walls, because the Great Insulating Project began before one of the big hurricanes and dry wall was too expensive afterward, so it's never gone back up. The only room in my house that's actually finished is my office, and while it's white, I don't think she'd like it because it does show signs of use.

28th-Jun-2007 02:17 pm (UTC)

shadesong

See, now you see why I freak out with the cleaning whenever they visit. Yes, my house will always have clutter and signs of use. My busting-my-ass-cleaning is mostly getting dust bunnies and making sure the cats haven't tracked litter into the kitchen, wiping down the sink and stove...

28th-Jun-2007 02:14 pm (UTC)

hughcasey

Y'know, if your parents were from South Philadelphia (or SOUT PHILLEE, as it's pronounced here), with it's heavily Italian and Polish influenced neighborhoods, all of that furniture in the "parlor" would be covered in plastic.

28th-Jun-2007 07:19 pm (UTC)

ardaniel

I'm assured by my SO that that's SOP for South Florida Italian families, too.

Shit, my uber-WASP great-aunt in New England had *plastic toothed treads,* made of heavy vinyl, throughout her home like moving sidewalks in some 1950s SF movie. It always made me sad that they didn't actually move, and that you were rarely allowed off them. ;)

28th-Jun-2007 02:20 pm (UTC)

circumspectly

Oh. How....sterile.

Gimme my dog hair and my overflowing bookcases and my dust...that way I know it's okay to fart in my own house.

28th-Jun-2007 02:24 pm (UTC)

mere_bystander

Sterile. That's the word that comes to mind.

I couldn't live like that!

28th-Jun-2007 02:26 pm (UTC)

mere_bystander

*scans other comments*

Oh! That's been said!

28th-Jun-2007 02:25 pm (UTC)

emilytheslayer

I think my mom always aspired to that house, but she had me and my dad getting in her way and being messy little hellions. We've never had a room people couldn't go in, thank god.

28th-Jun-2007 02:27 pm (UTC)

hookncrook

Its the white that gets you--it makes it look like a sanitarium.

28th-Jun-2007 02:27 pm (UTC)

ooshiny

...Wow.

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