Chapeau

~ Laura

DSC_0041

Last weekend, we had to get out of the house, because some real estate agent was going to stop by.

Dumb comment of the week: "I can't buy this house, because they have book shelves in the dining room." My response: "You aren't allowed to buy this house, because you are clearly too STOOPID."

Since we had to clear out for another insane buyer, I made everyone go with me to the Gap. My husband will wear the same t-shirt for years no matter how tight or holey or thin it gets. The only solution is to secretly dispose of the offending shirts and then force him to get new ones once a year. While Steve was whining like a little girl as I steered him towards the shirts, Jonah wandered over and asked if we could buy this hat for him. He modeled it for us. 

Jonah thinks that he looks like Justin Timberlake. I don't have the heart to tell him that he really looks like an Amish farmer. 

Published by Laura

22 thoughts on “Chapeau”

  1. The hat looks good, but I don’t think Timberlake would wear a sweater vest.
    I understand on the T-shirts, even though I’m actually happy when I get new ones. My advice would be to just replace the old ones with new on occasion w/o asking.
    You should tell the real estate agent to tell people that if they don’t have, say, cook-books, they can always put wine glasses or mugs or painted plates or something on the book shelves in the kitchen. We’ve used part of a book shelf as a place to store things for years.

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  2. Our bookshelves are $35 Billy bookcases from IKEA. They aren’t attached to the wall. They are coming with us.
    Yes, the stealth approach to my husband’s wardrobe is effective. I’ve done that, too.

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  3. He is a hipster! Give him an ironic t-shirt and that kid is the most stylish in the family.
    People are so weird. I can’t understand people who can’t visualize a different paint color or their own furniture. Get those people a cable subscription and force them to watch HGTV for a month.

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  4. It’s really funny, then, that someone would care about the bookshelves in the kitchen. The one we have there is something like that, though I think we may have bought it for $5 from someone moving out in west Philly years ago or the like. I, for one, would love to have a place w/ built-in shelves in the kitchen.

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  5. Pack up your books, and take down the bookcase.
    I know, it’s terrible. I’ve noticed in local real estate listings the fashion to have empty bookshelves, with objets d’art from the local Home Goods positioned in the gaping emptiness.
    You’re trying to sell your house, though, and in the end you don’t care if they read or not. Taking down the shelves allows your house to reach a wider audience.

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  7. I spend 80% of my sit-down time at home in my dining room (it’s the most central spot in the house with chairs), so I’ve got a large bookcase in there with my blue and white china, a papercraft St. Basil’s Cathedral, books I ought to read, cookbooks, medical reference, childcare reference, homemaker memoirs and classics (Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, A Sixpence in Her Shoe, Life Among the Savages), household hints, and a full shelf of aspirational home design coffee table books and magazines. Less aesthetically defensible, there’s also a large Coleman folding table that serves as a desk. Oh, yes, and there’s also a table and chairs.
    Depending on the floorplan of our next home, I will most likely get a real china cabinet and a real desk for our future dining room, but I plan to keep shelving for books if at all possible. (The dining room furniture may wind up being IKEA’s solid pine Hemnes series in black brown.)

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  8. Yeah, what Cranberry said. Really, you’re not going to prevent people from buying your house ’cause they’re so “STOOPID”, right? In fact, you want them to be just stupid enough to buy your house.
    I drove by the only other house we’ve owned last week (the one that I had heard had been substantially remodeled). It’s beautiful. The new owners have painted it yellow, added a 2nd floor with dormers, taken down the chimney that looked like it was going to fall on your head, and made the porch beautiful. This was the house that had a creek that used to run through the basement when it rained (I hear that there’s now a full basement, too, but I didn’t get to see that). So apparently, every did fine by their being just stoopid enough to buy our falling apart house.

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  9. The Amish around here wear hats with low flat tops, like flying saucers. The kids dress like tiny adults.

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  11. like flying saucers
    Without the flashing lights.
    They also wear black vests of some kind of woven cloth, not a knitted sweater vest. You see them around here fairly often because of the hospital.

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  12. He is the younger version of the main character in a Merchant-Ivory film, seen here in a flashback. Got an agent yet?

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  13. Merchant-Ivory films are the ones where the women are in bodices, but nobody ever rips them, right? Not worth it.

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  14. “You mean, people still have dining rooms?
    It’s sort of a large carpeted windowless breakfast room, but I don’t have a better name for it than “dining room”.

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  16. “You mean, people still have dining rooms?”
    yes, and we even have a big dining table in ours, which we use for dining with some regularity.

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  17. Hmh, on second thought, no bookshelves, because the “room” only has 2 walls and both of those have picture windows. The other “walls” are a counter, and columns connecting to the living room. So, perhaps our are does not count as a room, but is, instead, a dining area.

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  18. Books are obviously a taboo topic, and the loving shelves appear to be equally despised. I was “de-friended” by Pesto’s friends because I innocently asked, “Oh what are you reading?” Response, “We don’t read.”
    Me: a) who resides in NYC and doesn’t read? (Note: they have since moved to VA), and b) who ADMITS to not reading?

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  19. Macaroni,
    I have recently come to the conclusion that a lot of home designers hate books. I can’t remember all of the examples I’ve seen, but here are some:
    1. A designer hangs large framed pictures over a bookcase, blocking access to the books behind.
    2. Designers arrange books by color and size. Also, I’ve seen one recover the books in white (unlabeled!!!) covers.
    3. I’ve seen a headboard assembled from a multicolored assortment of bindings.
    4. I’ve also seen a craft idea where you take a pretty hardcover book, gut it, and transform it into a handbag.

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  20. What a sad and depressing anecdote, Macaroni.
    Just to clarify, I thought it was stupid that the potential buyer didn’t realize that the Billy bookshelves weren’t a permanent part of the dining room. I know that bookshelves aren’t for anyone. Actually, I think that Steve’s large collection of books on Nazis and hitler might be scaring off people. He’s reallygot to pack those babies up.

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  21. 4. I’ve also seen a craft idea where you take a pretty hardcover book, gut it, and transform it into a handbag.
    I keep meaning to make a book into a secret hidden safe. If it would help keep people from pulling out the hidden safe-book, I could use my copy of “Brown shirt, broken heart: The story of Ernst Röhm.”

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