Since we’re trying to sell our house, a designer came and looked at it to give suggestions. The mindset of an interior decorator and that of a programmer must be at polar opposites. I’ll take her opinions as reliable, since it’s her job and she’s an expert, but the ideas may as well have been in a language from a distant star for all the sense they made to me. Where I would think in terms of efficiency and practicality, she thinks in terms of fads and aesthetics. For eight years, we’ve apparently been living in the horrid squalor of unaccented white walls. I only hope my family can forgive me with time. I don’t know how we’ve survived in this state so long, but we’ll probably get the house painted. And in 30 years, it’ll probably be as out-of-fashion as 70s pea green is now. Our back yard has been, for the most part, “au naturale”…invaded by wild grass and a few weeds and so on. (This should apparently be said with great shame and in hushed tones from the designer’s reaction.) So, the back yard has to be worked on. Also, we apparently need to make the house look like nobody is living there. This is some feat with a one-year-old who believes that scattering items evenly around the house is a matter of national security and a five-year-old who somehow has the idea that toothpaste is supposed to be slathered generously over all bathroom surfaces. I think we’ll have to sleep on the floor and rent an acre of storage. Overall, what we thought was a structurally sound home in good condition has been an aesthetic deathtrap all along! The tragedy of all of this is that the house will be in its nicest condition ever just as we’re getting rid of it. Worse still, the designer made a scathing remark about my computer being in our closet. One does not simply besmirch the good name of a coder’s trusty computer! The truculence of it!
I suppose if we’d had the funds over the years, I’d probably have painted the house in video game themes like this. And I’d have done this to the garage door. But that would probably have made some designer cry…’cause it’s just so awesome.