#the one that reminded me of the really mediocre novel with the shitty ending?

[goatmilksoda]

Doomscrolling but my blog has been so thoughtfully curated with positivity that I just instead feel overwhelming Emotion™️ from also being tired and having a busy day.

It's not positive. Its not negative. It's not particularly energetic. But I need to do a push up and write 700 words right now or I'll die but I also cant.

[mldrgrl]

How Stella Got Her Groove Back

by: mldrgrl Rating: PG-13 Summary: Just a little something to celebrate spring...and Stella’s birthday!

They left Connecticut in September, with a fair amount of reluctance to go, but they needed to return to the city.  Becca had already gone and though both Karen and Fish insisted they were welcome to stay longer, stay forever if they had to, at a certain point, Hank and Stella had just been missing their loft and their life in New York too much.  Of course, they knew that what they were returning to was not the life they were accustomed to, but they would have to learn to adapt to the new normal.

Winter was long and brutal.  They did spend two weeks over Christmas and New Years back in Connecticut again and that was the first time they’d seen Becca since July, and the last time they would see her until spring.  Karen had tried to coerce them all to stay again and Hank and Stella nearly gave in.  If not for the fact that Stella left a project behind she’d been working on for her classes and if Hank had brought the pages he’d been working on for his new novel, they just might have done it.

When they got back to New York, and in a cabin fever-induced moment of weakness, they hired a landscape architect to design their rooftop terrace and though the noise of construction aggravated the hell out of both of them, they were both pleased with the results.  They now had an artificial lawn of soft green turf, an outdoor patio daybed in the shape of a cube with canvas shades on all four sides, a wet bar, strategically placed heating lamps, and a wood burning fire pit.  Unbeknownst to them, when Fish had heard their plans, he’d called the company they hired, ordered them a charcoal grill, and told the contractor to keep it a surprise.  They were very surprised by the barbeque that was suddenly part of the design, but it looked nice, even if it wouldn’t get any use.

Finding ways to fill the time with nowhere to go and no one to see was extremely difficult.  Neither of them were very much into television or movies.  The terrace, as welcome as it was, wasn’t finished until the end of February.  Stella had the classes she was teaching and the child psychology classes she was enrolled in to keep her fairly busy during the days, but Hank could only write for so many hours at a time and he found that he actually missed helping Fish with the guitar lessons.  He grumbled to Stella that ‘that damn Trout’ bewitched him somehow and then begrudgingly called him up and asked if he could still help out remotely.  Fish was delighted by the request and sent him an iPad and a teaching schedule.  

The close quarters had caused a few squabbles, though nothing major.  They took a few online cooking classes together which produced some mediocre meals and a testy exchange on the appropriate amount that constituted a ‘pinch of salt.’  Beyond that, they managed not to take out any frustrations on each other.

It was April 1st when Stella wandered from the bathroom to the bedroom in her t-shirt and sweatpants, rubbing lotion into her hands and arms.  Hank was in bed, perhaps naked, or perhaps wearing jockey shorts, she couldn’t be sure.  He had his guitar across his lap and his head back so that he gazed at the ceiling while he plucked lightly at the strings.

“Hank,” she said, leaning into the foot of the bed with slightly bended knees.

“Do you think ‘oral’ actually rhymes with ‘clorital’ or is it cheating?” he replied.

“You know that next week is my birthday.”

Hank splayed his hand out on the guitar and looked at her.  “Is this a trick question?”

“Not at all.”

“So, if I say ‘yes, of course, your birthday is April 7th and I already know I’m not to mention it to anyone,’ is that the wrong answer because I’m not supposed to acknowledge it in the first place?”

“I am aware that in the past I have requested that my birthday be treated as any other day.”

“Mmhm.”

“I’ve been thinking that perhaps...I might like to celebrate this year after all.”

“Oh, I get it.  April fools.  You could’ve just put plastic wrap on the toilet or secretly replaced my regular coffee with Folgers.”

“I’m serious.”

“Ah, so the one year it’s impossible to throw a party, you want to have a party?”

“God, no.  Parties are awful.”

“Well, what then?”

“Brunch?  With Becca?  This weekend, or the next, perhaps.  There are more places opening up now.  We could-”

“Absolutely, Sherlock.  Whatever the suggestion, I am all in.”  He pushed his guitar aside and she was mildly disappointed to discover that he was in his jockey shorts after all and not naked. He scooted forward to the end of the bed and wrapped his arms around her hips.

“A walk in the park, maybe?”

“Not sure if my legs remember what walking is at this point, so it’ll be good to remind them.”  He moved his hands down to the backs of her thighs and gave them a squeeze and then cupped her ass.  “Why the sudden change of heart, Sherlock?”

“I’ve just been thinking lately that it’s perfectly acceptable to want to celebrate being alive.  After the year we’ve had.”

“I agree, but as long as I get to have my breakfast in bed in bed that day, I’ll be happy.”

“It’s my birthday, I’m not bringing you breakfast in bed.”

“Oh, honey, you are the breakfast,” he growled, wrapping his arms around her again and pulling her into him as he fell back onto the bed.

*****

The Saturday before her birthday was Easter weekend.  There was no rain in the forecast and Becca was available, so it was perfect.  They took a Lyft to the upper west side and met her at a French bistro that had outdoor seating.  Stella could tell right away that something was bothering Becca, that she was putting on a false front of cheerfulness, which was very unlike her, but if she did know her stepdaughter, she knew the girl could not keep up pretenses for long.

They ordered and waited for their food over bottomless mimosas and miniature ham and cheese croissants served as an appetizer.  It wasn’t cold, but a cool breeze would drift by every so often and Stella was glad she had left her hair down so that her ears were covered.  She wished she’d been a bit more practical though and worn pants.  She’d just felt like dressing up and at the last minute, put on an olive-colored dress with small printed white flowers on it, but at least it was long-sleeved and she had a white sweater.  Becca and Hank were like twins in their matching leather jackets and dark jeans.

“Are you working on anything?” Becca asked Hank.

“Almost finished,” he answered.

“Oh.  What’s it about?”

“A couple that’s been married for fifteen years, but they’re on the brink of the divorce when the pandemic hits and then they go from spending almost no time together to all of their time together and it’s disastrous at first, but then they end up learning a lot about each other.”

“So, they save their marriage?”

“No, they end up getting divorced anyway.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“It’s fiction, sweetheart.”

“People like happy endings.”

“People are stupid.  I didn’t say it didn’t have a happy ending though.  Are you working on anything, Daughter?”

Becca sighed and picked at her nails.  Stella put a hand on Hank’s knee under the table.

“Is something bothering you, Darling?” Stella asked.

“No.  Yeah.  No.  I don’t wanna ruin your birthday or anything when it’s the first birthday we’ve ever celebrated together.”

Stella gave Becca a brief smile.  “I don’t know if your father has told you why I’ve always been rather reluctant to celebrate my birthday.”

Becca shook her head.  Hank stretched his arm out behind Stella’s chair and put his hand on her back.  She gave his knee a squeeze of appreciation.

“My father passed away on my fourteenth birthday,” Stella said.  “So, Darling, you have a high bar to overcome if you think being in a low mood will ruin my birthday.”

“That sucks about your dad, I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright.”  Stella looked to Hank for a moment and then back to Becca.  “I’ve spent many years trying to ignore the date as though if I didn’t acknowledge it, it’s like it had never happened.  I don’t think I really understood until quite recently that one is capable of being sad and grateful at the same time.  And that life should be celebrated.  Especially now.”

“I guess I’m just...when we were up at Mom’s house, everything was so easy and nice and I had a really hard time writing.  That’s why I wanted to leave.  It was way too peaceful.”

“You know if I had a dollar for every time Becca claimed my shit was fucking her up, I’d be richer than that fucking Amazon guy, and now it sounds like she wants to file a grievance that we’re not fucking her up enough.”

“Am not.”  Becca rolled her eyes.

“Don’t listen to him,” Stella said.  “He’s been so mired with boredom lately he has regular calls with Fish.”

“No!”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Hank protested, putting his hands up in defense.  “There was and will only be one bromance in my life and that’s with one Mr. Charles Runkle, that follically challenged motherfucker.  No better pairing existed except for maybe Bert and Ernie, or Sid and Nancy.”

“I think we should let Becca continue with what she was trying to say.”

“Thank you.”  Becca put her hand up as though she was blocking Hank from her view and he reached over and slapped her palm away.  “As I was saying, I left because I thought the serenity was blocking me in some way, but since I’ve been back, it’s like the opposite.  It felt so apocalyptic at first and desperate.  It was like impossible to sit down and put words together when there were so many shitty things happening outside.  What if...what if the next thing I finish, people will be like oh, she was just sitting inside writing while everyone else was dying?”

“There will always be shitty things happening outside,” Hank said.  

“Great advice, Dad.”

“I don’t mean to bitchslap you with reality, but the world being shitty isn’t a reason to give up.”

“I’m not giving up.”

“Good, because you are way more fucking talented than I could ever even hope to be.”

“I just don’t know if it matters.  If anyone should care.”

“Why should you concern yourself with that?”

Becca glared at Hank, clearly annoyed with the answer.

“I know you think I’m being facetious,” Hank said, quickly.  “But, I’m not.  If all anyone wanted to read was about things that ‘mattered’ that 50 Shades of Hot Garbage would never have sold a single copy.  You don’t know why people read what you write.  Maybe they want to escape the shitty things happening in the world.  Maybe they want to laugh or cry or be turned on.  Maybe they just need something to pass the time.”

“Five minutes ago you just said people were stupid for wanting happy endings, now you’re saying I should just give them garbage, if that’s what they want.”

“Yeah, I’m a fucking hypocrite, what else is new, but I just want you to be happy with what you’re doing.  You want me to buy you a new laptop?”

“I’m not twelve anymore.  You can’t just buy my happiness.”

“Worth a shot.”

“Becca,” Stella finally interjected.  “I think it’s obvious by now that your father may possibly be the world’s worst motivational speaker.”

“Or the world’s best unmotivational speaker,” Hank said.  “You see what I did there?  I turned a negative into a positive.”

Both Stella and Becca ignored the comment.

“I think I may understand what he’s trying to say though,” Stella said.  “I’m not a creator, but I’ve been a consumer.  When I was reading for pleasure, I certainly wasn’t reaching for mystery novels.  And I think that...popularity and quality are two different things.  Certainly, one would hope for both, but it isn’t always the case.  I know you and I know that quality is important to you, so perhaps you should only focus on if what you’re working on is the best that it can be and not on whether or not it matters.”

“Can I add something to that?” Hank asked.

“Not if you plan on fucking up everything Stella just said,” Becca answered.

“I’ve done at least a dozen online events this year and at every single one, someone has asked me when the next Rebecca Moody novel is going to be released or they want to know what you’re working on.  I’m not even entirely sure all of them are there to hear my Q&A or if they just showed up because they know I’m your dad and they think you might make a guest appearance.  And if one person takes umbrage with you for creating something during a time of utter hell, fuck them.”

“Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable,” Stella quoted.

“That sounds so much hotter when you say it than George Bernard Shaw,” Hank replied, rubbing his hand across Stella’s upper back.

“Okay, I don’t want to spend this day being miserable,” Becca said, shaking her head and shoulders like she was trying to rid herself of negativity.  “Thank you, Stella.”

“You’re welcome, darling girl.”

“Hey, what about me?” Hank asked.

“There is this jacket I saw online that I want,” Becca answered, cheekily raising one of her eyebrows and tilting her head.

“I’ll text you my credit card number later.”

“Thank you, Father.”

*****

Brunch was followed by a stroll in Central Park and it seemed that at least half of the city had the same idea.  It was interesting being in a place so crowded and yet also so open.  The decent weather and the cherry blossoms in full bloom probably had something to do with it.  What also would have felt strange a year ago, seeing everyone wearing face masks and wearing them as well, was oddly comforting.  When Stella had put hers on that morning before they walked out the door, Hank told her she looked like a sexy brain surgeon or cardiologist, whichever one was smarter or made more money.

When they came upon Bethesda Fountain, there was a small band playing salsa music and a few couples dancing.  Hank tried to imitate the steps and then grabbed Becca’s hand and spun her around under his arm.  She laughed and tried to break free of him, but he pulled her back in and tried to get her to dance.

“Da-ad,” Becca protested.

“Dance with me, Daughter.”

“I don’t dance.”

“You’re no fun.”  Hank let go of Becca’s hand and then grabbed Stella’s.

“Oh, no,” she said.

“Come on, Sherlock.  I know you’ve probably got some moves I’ve never seen.”

“I assure you that’s not true,” she answered, letting him spin her away though and then laughed as he gyrated his hips dramatically as he stepped back towards her.  “Whatever it is that you’re doing does not resemble the salsa in any way.”

“Let me see you do better.”

Stella looked past Hank to the other dancers and mimicked the forward and back steps.  She put a hand on Hank’s chest to keep him at arm’s length and prevent their knees from colliding as he tried to fall into the same step with her, moving forward when she stepped back, and back when she stepped forward.  What he lacked in grace, he made up for with enthusiasm.  As soon as they fell into sync, he grabbed her hand and lifted her other arm in a more formal dance frame like the other dancers had.

What followed was probably the worst and most amateurish version of a salsa that had ever been danced, but Stella laughed so hard it brought tears to her eyes.  When the music ended, Hank stopped and pulled Stella’s face mask down under her chin before lowering his own and then kissing her through both of their laughter.

The dancing couples broke apart and drifted back into the crowd.  Becca went over and dropped some money into the cup on the ground in front of the band and thanked them for playing.  Stella took Hank’s hand and then Becca linked her arm with Stella’s as they continued on.

Later that night, when Stella came out of the bathroom as she rubbed lotion into her hands and arms, she stopped at the foot of the bed and watched Hank read over the latest pages of his novel.  When she was finished, she climbed onto the bed and walked over to Hank on her knees until she was straddling his lap.  He threw his pages down, took his reading glasses off, and pulled her close with his hands on her ass.

“Thank you,” Stella said, as Hank kissed the side of her neck.

“For what?”

“This truly was the best birthday I’ve ever had.”

“Your birthday’s not until Wednesday.”

“Perhaps next year we’ll even be able to invite Karen and Fish to town.”

“We’ll make The Trout christen that barbeque he forced on us.”

“It does look nice though.”

“It really does.  You want your present now, or should I wait until Wednesday?”

“I might be interested in a preview,” she said, sliding her hand down his chest and then into his shorts.  “A little peak at the package ahead of time.”

“You just assumed I was talking about fucking when I said I had something for you?”

“Weren’t you?”

Hank paused and then grinned.  “Yeah, I was.”

The End

[ofdianaes-blog]

DIANA  ARCHIBALD [ VIRGINIA GARDENER ] is a JUNIOR at Broadripple Academy. She is SEVENTEEN years old, from BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS and has been at Broadripple Academy for HALF A year.

hiya all ! i’m meredith, i’m 18 and i never learned how to fucking read i’m super excited to be here ! feel free to slide into my ims if you want to plot at all, i’m down for whatever and am super excited to get to plotting with you all, and i hope you love/hate my new baby, diana just as much as i do. i’ve included some stuff about her under the cut, as well as some plot ideas i’d like to see. y’all can also message me on discord if you want for easier plotting, i’m meredith#3445

okay, her bio is all the way at the end of this just in case it’s posted on the main by the time i post this and i don’t wanna make anyone suffer through it. if you haven’t seen it, just scroll on down and it should be there for you to learn all about my girl. now for wanted plots/plot ideas ( i’m like, zero percent limited to any of these ) 

BLACKMAIL OR SYMPATHY? THE WORLD IS YOUR OYSTER basically, this plot is someone knowing that diana is a big fat faker. maybe they went to middle school with her, or one of her many different personalities in high school before they both ended up at broadripple. with all the times she’s moved, as long as it was in state ... it might very well be a possibility she knows one person. maybe they read her diary, she keeps it under her mattress. maybe they just caught her mouthing the words to a billboard top 100 song and her cover is blown. who knows! we can sort all that out. this person can either hold this over diana’s head, or they’ll feel bad for her and attempt to show her the ropes of everything and keep her secret on the dl. the first is more fun for me, the second is more fun for diana. your pick. 

YOU’VE_GOT_A_FRIEND_IN_ME.mp3 someone that sees through that pretentious candy shell to the mediocre chocolate that’s beneath. i imagine most people have a low tolerance for when diana gets into one of her real cinema is dead, i was born in the wrong generation moods, but this is the person that sticks by her, reminds her she’s being obnoxious, and she can still listen to the smiths in 2019, no one is stopping her. did they meet in english class, sharing an illicit cigarette, bonding over how diana is always getting a coffee? it’s all up to you, but partners in not really crime is something i’d love to see for her. she gets lonely, y’all. 

RIVALS TO ENEMIES TO RIVALS (100k, F/?) i’m running out of creativity for these plot ideas, okay? anyone who dare insinuate (or outright say) diana is wrong about, ahem, anything, or has poor taste or whatever is bound to be at the receiving end of her wrath. and by wrath, i mean glares across the hallway and the angry writings in her journal. don’t call it a diary, even though it really is, she’ll get mad. if this person wants to share passive aggressive quips and feuds, then ooh boy, is diana the enemy for them. this can be someone who’s uninhibited by her desperation for the cool factor and is just themselves, or someone who thinks she isn’t cool enough. either one will make her skin crawl. 

FILM PROTEGE / HER YOUNG PADAWAN they don’t even necessarily have to be into the same shit she is, or film at all, though they could want her to teach them about shitty foreign films and 80s sadgirl music. if she sees anyone shy or meek or just not with big enough of a personality, she’ll ceaselessly volunteer to show them to the world of not knowing how to shut their damn mouth. god knows that’s the world she’s living in. while she isn’t necessarily a rebel (she always recycles and does her homework), she does partake in habits such as [ gasp ] swearing and the devil’s lettuce. whether this person is shy or just extraordinary strait-laced .... let diana ( holes voice ) fix that 

okay, now her bio is below this line. enjoy !

Though Diana Archibald is indisputably a firecracker, to say she came into the world with a bang would be a bold faced lie. She was born to the archetypical white picket fence, upper middle class family. She donned pink onesies and cooed alongside family pet golden retriever, a friendly, brown-eyed creature named Max — Diana would vomit at how the stereotypes seemed to stack so neatly. Tragedy and betrayal, however, can taint even the most normal of lives, and with her mother’s cancer diagnoses, her father was out the door before she could toddle. Hindered by the cost of medical bills, Elizabeth Archibald, Diana’s partial namesake, withered away into nothing. With her father unable to be located for child support or to take her in, who was once a perfect, porcelain blonde baby doll became red faced and tearful toddler — a ward of the state, sent on the pipeline from foster home to foster home.

Diana was raised on half rewound VHS tapes and scratchy, skipping DVDs that she was shoved in front of to keep her docile and occupied. Her obsession with stories didn’t stop there, as she stumbling through the minimal words in picture books turned into devouring novels with a wind up flashlight under the thick covers of her bunk bed. She saw herself in the pages of protagonists burned by tragic backstories, of boys and girls who rose from the ashes and became strong and willful and exactly who she wanted to be. She wanted nothing more than to satiate the hunger she felt to be like them: to be something. And so, the lies began: carefully crafted, always a new story wherever she went.

The first half of freshman year, she was a bubbly cheerleader in a tiny town on the Connecticut border, where she reeked of bubblegum and painted her nails bright pink in class, doodling the names of the cutest boys in school amongst her math notes. Second half, she was a band geek in Cambridge, with grades imbalanced to direct her towards the arts as she nervously learned to play the clarinet, swapping spit under the bleachers with pimple faced boys who played the drums and frizzy-braided girls in the brass section. The first half of sophomore year she lived in the suburbs of Boston, where she had heavy black eyeliner and a permanent scowl on her face, she recited poetry and wrote her own, deep and dark. She got a stick and poke on her ankle in her best friend’s garage, and shoplifted religiously. Once January hit and she was somewhere else, demanding she was referred to only by her last name. She wore flannel and beanies and refused to speak in class, passing a joint back and forth around in the basement of a senior who looked at her with leering eyes. The first half of her junior year, she was the perfect church girl, her hair always in neat braids and a smile on lightly glossed lips as she perfectly enunciated hymns and messages of peace be with you. A golden cross hung loosely around her neck, and she meticulously frosted cupcakes for the school bake sale and highlighted passages in her bible.

That’s how she supposes, she ended up at Broadripple. After she was shoved out of that town, that school, that family, her newfound love of religion was deemed of enough importance: Diana was a lovely candidate for the philanthropy of Broadripple Academy, and they would be so happy to have her attend. She was used to moving, but not into buildings with ivy covered walls and pleated skirts being added to her wardrobe. The sudden, abrupt change unlike any other had left her floundering for a new personality to latch onto, a new story to spin: until she came up with the best one yet. The perfect story was a story maker, pathological liar turned into filmmaker. Polaroid camera is always tucked into her backpack, and phone is always ready to film. She’s no longer a participant: she’s an observer. Her father was an important producer in Hollywood, she told everyone in her science class. Her mother was a retired soap opera star, but she was just as beautiful as she was in her haydey. No one cared enough to Google, and ambiguities and carefully placed anecdotes were her specialties — it worked. Now, she was the creative, wide eyed and quiet, journaling late into the night and always with a cup of coffee in hand, contraband cigarettes kept in her bottom dresser drawer. She reads classic literature and insists music sounds better on vinyl, carefully critiquing the film taste of her peers.

No matter how carefully crafted, aren’t all ruses bound to end?

and her personality section !

She’s black coffee and vinyl records, she’s the crunch of fall leaves under your shoes and absent sharpie doodles up and down your arm. She’s ballpoint pens and perfume that smells like vanilla, she’s the big glasses perched on her nose that she doesn’t really need, she’s cheeks carefully dusted with blush to make her look kissed by winter air. She’s cinnamon bubblegum and sitting cross legged in the grass, snapping photos of bunnies as they trot between trees.

DISHONEST: There’s an itch that can’t be scratched away, and it’s to tell another lie. One more won’t hurt. She tells herself, in fact, it might just help. She’s lived in Beverly Hills and Brooklyn, she tells them, twirling her hair nervously around her finger. She’s never even left the state.

ASTUTE: There’s no denying Diana is smart. One has to be, to stop themselves from getting tangled in a web of dishonesty. Math and science aren’t specialties of hers, but they still come easily, and her natural flair for artistry and the dramatics has made her an excellent writer and creative student. Good grades are easily achieved, and Diana easily takes notice of things other people try to hide.

SELF-IMPORTANT: Diana does everything better, she’s sure of it. After all, she’s had to put in the research into how exactly to do things right. This new personality of hers only amplifies the airs of betterness she seems to put on — though there’s no cracks shown in confidence, it certainly is a facade.

GREGARIOUS: Even in her quite states, it’s always been easy for Diana to make friends. She’s naturally empathetic, and has no issue molding herself to suit what the conversation needs. She’ll donate to charity or talk shit behind your back — whatever the conversation calls for. She’s a social butterfly that can never seem to settle on a hive, and that leaves most of her relationships at surface level.

[justforbooks]

I’ve been trying to remember, was it The Sorrow And The Pity they were lining up for when, sick to death of the medium-is-the-message windbaggery of the pseudo-intellectual – now there’s a term to blast me back – in front of him, Alvy actually produces Marshall McLuhan from behind a lobby card? The association strikes me as a natural one, since I’m about to gather with the other acolytes in an art house cinema. Will anyone in the queue reference or be moved to imitate the McLuhan moment, I wonder?

And where were they? Was it at the Regency at 68th street? (Was it even called the Regency? It hardly matters, since it’s gone now, like the New Yorker at 88th, the movie house at 72nd and Broadway, the Thalia {{which does show up at the very end of the movie, when he runs into Annie after they’ve stopped dating and introduces her to a young, young Sigourney Weaver, fresh out of Yale}}, the Metro, the Bleecker and, of course, Theater 80. With all the rep houses having ceded their real estate to condos and their authority to Netflix, who is curating the tastes of the city’s undergraduates? How will they even know about The Sorrow And The Pity? Mondo Cane? How can the budding homosexual flower without the occasional force-feeding of a double feature of Now Voyager and All About Eve? To wit – and to extend this parenthetical yet further: in senior year, at the last meeting of our Japanese literature seminar before Spring break, the professor – ageing, erudite, one of the few, perhaps only, Western recipients of countless Japanese cultural laurels – asked us our plans for the coming week. I allowed as how I would be staying in town in order to write my thesis. ‘Well then, of course you’ll be going to the Bette Davis festival every day down at the Embassy.’ He said it as if stating an obvious prescription, like recommending medical attention for a sucking chest wound, or ‘You’ll want to call the fire department about those flames licking up the front of your house.’ Only a self-destructive lunatic would think he could survive the week by missing the Bette Davis festival. I took his advice and went every day. Did it help my thesis any? Hard to say. It was a long time ago.)

The time when a Woody Allen retrospective would have evoked that kind of fierce cinéaste devotion seems long gone, having been tempered out of us not just by the years (such performative loyalty is really the province of the youngsters who nightly go to Irving Plaza right near my apartment, passing the hours sitting on the pavement singing the songs of the artists they are about to see), but by Woody Allen himself. The tsunami of mediocrities like Hollywood Ending and Melinda And Melinda effectively obliterates why Manhattan mattered so much. I can’t help feeling like he’s dismantled the very admirable legacy of his earlier work by his later, overly prolific efforts. It’s a more benign version of Ralph Nader (with the key difference that I hate Ralph Nader, whereas Woody Allen simply makes me a little bit sad).

Then again, no one worth a damn doesn’t make the occasional bit of bad work: there are episodes of The Judy Garland Show that are absolute train wrecks of creaky squareness, made all the more ghoulish by the presence of an aphasic gin-soaked Peter Lawford, and I take a back seat to no one in my love for Judy Garland, the most talented individual who ever lived (ladies and gentlemen, my Kinsey placement); I read a lousy late Edith Wharton novel this summer, The Children, that was a tone-deaf, treacly muddle; I don’t care for Balanchine’s Scherzo à la Russe and I’ve said it before, even though it is considered a cinematically signal moment by the Cahiers du Cinema crowd (zzzzzzz), I’m no great fan of the movie Kiss Me Deadly.

Perhaps taken as a whole, the twenty-eight films will start to exert their own internal logic and I will see and delight in how Allen mines his themes over and over again. Or perhaps it will be like the Broadway show Fosse, where a surfeit of the choreographer’s vocabulary made all of it suffer and the entire thing looked like the kind of shitty entertainment that takes place on a raised, round, carpeted platform at a car show. I’ll see, I guess.

As one might expect for the 1:30 p.m. showing on the Friday before Christmas, there are only about a dozen of us waiting. Our ranks swell to about thirty people closer to show time, but at first it’s just me and more than a few men of a certain age (whose ranks I join with ever greater legitimacy each day), about whom it might be reasonably assumed that we spend an inordinate amount of time fixating on when next we might need to pee. Thoughts of age stay at the forefront in the first few minutes of the film, when Woody Allen himself (who, it must be said, in later scenes, stripped down to boxers, kind of had a rocking little body in his day) addresses the camera directly and tells us that he just turned forty. I’m older than that by two years.

How many times have I seen this, I wonder? Unquantifiable. The film is canonical and familiar and memorized, almost to the point of ritual. Perhaps this is the spiritual solace the faithful find in the formulaic rhythms of liturgy. It’s as comforting as stepping into a warm bath. Diane Keaton is enchanting, there is no other word for it. She comes on the screen and you can hear the slightest creaking in the audience as corners of mouths turn up. There is Christopher Walken, a peach-fuzzed stripling. And there, doe-eyed, with drum-tight skin: Carol Kane playing Alvy’s first wife, Allison Portchnik.

Allison Portchnik. Oy. I am generally known as an unfailingly appropriate fellow. I have very good manners. But when I fuck up, I fuck up big time. Suddenly I am reminded of how, three years ago, I was on a story for an adventure magazine, an environmental consciousness-raising whitewater-rafting expedition in Chilean Patagonia (about which the less said the better. It’s really scary. Others may call it exhilarating, and I suppose it is, the way having a bone marrow test finally over and done with is exhilarating. And Patagonia, Chilean Patagonia at least, while pretty, isn’t one tenth as breathtaking as British Columbia). On the trip with me were Bobby Kennedy, Jr., hotelier André Balazs and Glenn Close, among others. Everyone was very nice, I hasten to add.

After lunch one day, my friend Chris, the photographer on the story, came up to me and said, ‘I’d lay off the Kennedy assassination jokes if I were you.’

I laughed, but Chris reiterated, not joking this time. ‘No, I’d really lay off the Kennedy assassination jokes. The lunch line . . .’ he reminded me.

And then I remembered. I had been dreading this trip (see above about how totally justified I was in my trepidation) for weeks beforehand, terrified by the off-the-grid distance of this Chilean river, a full three days of travel away; terrified of the rapids and their aqueous meatgrinder properties; terrified of just being out of New York. All of this terror I took and disguised as an affronted sense of moral outrage, that such trips were frivolous, given the terrible global situation. I explained it to Glenn Close thusly:

‘I was using the war in Iraq to try and avoid coming down here,’ suddenly, unthinkingly invoking the part of Annie Hall where Alvy breaks off from kissing Allison because he’s distracted by niggling doubts: if the motorcade was driving past the Texas Book Depository, how could Oswald, a poor marksman, have made his shot? Surely there was a conspiracy afoot. Then, with Bobby Kennedy, Jr. helping himself to three-bean salad on the lunch line not five feet away, I switched into my Carol Kane as Allison Portchnik voice and said, ‘You’re using the Kennedy Assassination as an excuse to avoid having sex with me.’ Then I followed that up with my Woody Allen imitation and finished out the scene. Nice. No one pointed out my gaffe or was anything other than gracious and delightful.

Despite how well I know the material, the film feels so fresh. All the observations and jokes feel like they’re being made for the first time, or are at least in their infancy. By later films they will feel hackneyed (in the movie Funny Girl, the process of calcification is even more accelerated. You get back from intermission and Barbra Streisand already feels like too big a star, a drag version of herself ), but here it’s all just terrifically entertaining. And current! Alvy tells his friend Max that he feels that the rest of the country turning its back on the city – It’s the mid-70s. Gerald Ford to New York: Drop Dead, and all that jazz – is anti-Semitic in nature. That we are seen as left-wing, Communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers. And so we remain, at least in the eyes of Washington and elsewhere, a pervy bastion of surrender monkeys. There was an Onion headline that ran after a sufficient interval of time had passed post-9/11, that essentially read, ‘Rest of country’s temporary love affair with New York officially over.’

Rest of the country’s perhaps, but mine was just beginning when I saw the film at age eleven. By the time the voiceover gets to the coda about how we throw ourselves over and over again into love affairs despite their almost inevitable disappointments and heartbreak because, like the joke says, ‘we need the eggs,’ (if you need the set-up to the punchline, what on earth are you doing reading this?) I am weepy with love for the city. Although, truth be told, it doesn’t take much to get my New York waterworks going.

Walking out, my friend Rick, thirtyplus years resident said, ‘I had forgotten how Jewish a film it is.’ I really hadn’t noticed. But I’m the wrong guy to ask. It’s like saying to a fish, ‘Do things around here seem really wet to you?’ I wrote a book that got translated into German a few years back. There was a fascination among the Germans with what they perceived as my Jewish sensibility; a living example of the extirpated culture. I’ve said this before, but I felt like the walking illustration of that old joke about the suburbs being the place where they chop down all the trees and then name the streets after them. At least a dozen of the reviews referred to me as a ‘stadtneurotiker’, an urban neurotic, a designation that pleased me, I won’t lie. Especially when I found out the German title for Annie Hall.

Der Stadtneurotiker.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[billydmacklin]

The Laundry Room, 2018 Edition!

At some point in the past couple of years, I got a little…stuck with my own house. I know for a lot of people this feeling might not be especially out of the ordinary, but to me it was novel. The house itself was going through a decidedly “rough patch” in the course of this whole renovation/restoration madness, and to some extent my mental health followed suit. My ability to make decisions and actionable plans seemed to evaporate, which of course made everything feel worse. I’m not sure if I was looking for answers, or trying to remind myself that beautiful things do, in fact, still exist, or just to try to un-block something in my brain, but I found myself looking more and more to visual inspiration.

I’ve had the inkling for a very long time that too much “inspiration” can actually produce the opposite result. I’ve seen this with various clients over the years—they’ll send me a Pinterest board they’ve assembled over some time for a given project, hoping that each image might in some way be represented in the final product. The trouble is that most people aren’t only attracted to one particular aesthetic: they’re attracted to lots of them. It’s much easier to recognize what we think is beautiful than it is to create it. So then, armed with too much inspiration, we try to devise a way to incorporate all these things into a given space, which is usually not possible. Or at least not possible if the goal is to produce a beautiful result. So then we have to start making sacrifices, but now we’ve fallen in love with all of these disjointed elements, all generally done by other people who are really good at this and have lots of money, and we don’t feel confident in making those calls, or even know which calls we have to make, and then we’re paralyzed.

Then, seeking clarity, we bury ourselves in more “inspiration,” as though the image that will make all of this come together could be just the next click away. This, of course, is not especially productive, but it feels like it is.

Being somewhat aware of this, I’ve never used Pinterest except when a client gig required me to. This seemed like a good way to avoid this issue for myself, but I think I failed to appreciate the extent to which the Pinterest mentality has really permeated so many other spaces. The Inspiration Overload is everywhere—Instagram, Facebook, other blogs—and this crept up on me a bit. Soon all of my own work felt so small and shitty and lame, and making simple decisions became an extended exercise in self-doubt and insecurity. Each project in my house became an opportunity to create something amazinggggg but then only if I could remove the very real limitations of time and budget. When it came to my laundry room, I got so caught up in all these things I could see doing: beautiful and spacious custom built-in storage, a sink-to-end-all-sinks, a gorgeous tiled floor, and of course something more interesting for the walls than just painted plaster. Right? I wanted it to look fresh and original and like nothing I’d seen before, while at the same time wanting it to look just like a thousand things I’d seen and bookmarked or screen-capped or otherwise “pinned” without the benefit of organization that I suppose Pinterest provides.

Naturally, once these ideas entered my brain, it became impossible to dispense with them. The floor tile would have cost about $1,000 I didn’t have, but felt so essential to the very premise of renovating the laundry room that I couldn’t see a way around it. Since about half the room would be taken up by the machines, the sink, and storage, I thought maybe I’d compromise and save the expensive tile for the visible part of the floor, but then I’d need the sink and attending cabinetry to be installed first, which of course would mean buying or making those, which I also didn’t have the time/money for. I also really wanted to get the laundry done before being completely occupied with the much more involved kitchen renovation, but in order to do that I’d have to actually start working on it, which would mean finalizing these decisions, which of course I couldn’t do. This all rolled around in my mind for months while my washer and dryer sat useless in the spare room.

I guess when I started this whole renovation “journey,” I felt like the only logical path forward was escalation. Bigger projects. More advanced DIYs. An ever-expanding collection of tools and technical skills that I’d use to create the most amazing spaces I could dream of, because otherwise what’s the point? Putting this much time and effort and money into something should not yield mediocrity.

And then it hit me. It’s not the first time and won’t be the last, but I’m really trying to actively keep it in mind: Not. Everything. Has. To. Be. The. Very. Best. It. Can. Be. IT REALLY IS OK. A lot of things can be improved and changed down the line, when the time and money materializes. It doesn’t all have to happen in one take. At the end of the day, this laundry room has to accomplish one thing: wash my dirty clothes. Everything else is bonus. Also, it’s JUST A LAUNDRY ROOM.

And then something happened: I FELT SO LIBERATED. Without realizing it, and largely out of necessity, I took away the pressure of perfection and replaced it with the momentum of just GETTING IT DONE. Added to this was the challenge of doing it as inexpensively as possible, because the goal was no longer incredible beauty but instead just getting to a place of very basic functionality—and still being able to afford a kitchen stove.

And then another thing happened: in spite of my best efforts, the room actually turned out kinda cute, if you’ll permit me just a little bit of self-congratulation. Because I actually do like my stuff. I actually am generally happy with the decisions I make about my own living space. I actually am capable of making those decisions if I just lighten the fuck up a little and stop freaking out about having the coolest laundry room that my brain can conjure, and creating it in one shot.

Because only a monster would post an after image without a before, here’s the now-laundry room way back when I bought the house! It was one of the first rooms I really tackled, trying to get my renovation sea legs, and I turned it into this office:

I loved that little office, but for various reasons it eventually made way more sense to make this little space into the laundry room. It was sad for a while. Out came the desk, down came the obsolete chimney, in went new electric and plumbing, and up went new drywall and a couple fresh coats of paint annnndddddd…

Laundry room! With a utility sink! And a pink floor! I ain’t mad about it!

By the way, YES. It feels very weird/kinda embarrassing to now have “after” photos of the “after” photos from 4 years ago. I’m also 100% positive that there are those among us who will view this as a downgrade rather than an improvement, but in the context of the whole house I SWEAR this is so much better. Second floor laundry with all this natural light is such an insane luxury. My clothes are literally cleaner because I can see stains and stuff so much more easily, so my pre-treatment game is now ON POINT. I feel very on top of my laundry situation generally and it’s a great feeling.

ALSO, due to my chronic condition of over-sharing—here is the room like a day or two before I snapped the “after” photos. And honestly this is more of what I had in mind when I was all “I HAVE NO NEED FOR CUTE I ONLY NEED CLEAN UNDIES,” but then I sort of liked the additional challenge (/let’s be honest, procrastination) of trying to dress her up a little and add some storage without spending a dime. So I spent the next day just puttering around the house and hanging things up and messing around and it got kind of nice while I wasn’t looking!

Anyway. Point being, that little bit of extra effort was totally worth it and made me feel like I don’t have to really mess with this room for a long time. It also got some of my shit out of indefinite storage and put to good use!

The single biggest new purchase in this room was this cheap plastic utility sink. Various commenters were gravely concerned about this sink choice when I first mentioned it, encouraging me to go with something higher-quality/prettier/ceramic/stone/fireclay/stainless/vintage/antique BUT honestly even trolling Craigslist for some amazing $100 antique soapstone sink STILL involves trolling Craigslist, going to pick up the thing, overcoming the lurking fear of getting Craigslist-murdered, getting it home, cleaning/restoring it, getting it upstairs, probably special-ordering various parts to hook it up, maybe needing to enlist a plumber who wouldn’t show up anyway…SO WHILE I APPRECIATE ALL THE SUGGESTIONS, I am also so very happy that all I had to do was give $95 to Lowe’s and it wasn’t some whole production. When the perfect sink shows up, all the plumbing is there waiting for it.

I still spray-painted the legs black, because I can’t help myself.

Regarding the sink, it is exactly as mediocre as you might expect. It is decidedly un-fancy. It’s very lightweight and therefore doesn’t feel solid or substantial, although I did screw it right into the wall to keep it stable. It stains REALLY easily and stubbornly. It’s also HUGE and was so cheap and I LOVE IT SO MUCH, UNAPOLOGETICALLY. But like, get something nicer if you can swing it. Tell me all about it.

The plumbing under the sink isn’t so great looking either, so I spent 10 minutes making it a little modesty skirt. It’s just a tea towel folded in half with some velcro pinned to it, so it’s all easily removable and the tea towel is intact whenever I want it to be a tea towel again.

Maybe I’ll make a bunch of them so I can change the sink’s outfits seasonally. Hawt lewks for my stained plastic tub sink.

I hung up an old mirror just behind the sink to provide a little backsplash. Problem solved! I kinda love those little plastic clips that hold it up—they were a couple bucks at the hardware store but feel so 60s kitschy. Like not something you should be able to still go buy.

I put up a shelf! My pal Anna gave me like six of those IKEA brackets when she moved and they’ve just been cluttering my basement since. They were white and I spray painted them black and hung them up with some brass screws. Cute! I don’t think IKEA still makes these exact ones, but these are really similar.

The wood came off of the house at some point over the course of renovation, but I’m really struggling to remember what it did in its former life. I guess it doesn’t matter. I gave it a quick sand and a few coats of shellac and BOOM, shelf.

On the shelf is an assortment of things I have accumulated in my short but hoard-y lifetime. The yellowware bowls are antique—one holds detergent pods and the other holds those Affresh tablets that are supposed to rid the washing drum of that swamp smell in the summer. This is to prove once again that I will decant anything.

Tucked into the mirror frame are my two Laundry Idols, my mother below and my grandmother above. My grandma’s favorite task was laundry, and she passed much of her wisdom on to my mother, and I feel some grave sense of duty to, like, not ruin my clothes and bring shame on the family. So they watch over the goings-ons in this room.

I’m sorry I’m not sorry for loving that portrait but I can’t help myself. Her expression is SO GOOD. I bought her at an auction (I think I paid ten actual American greenbacks for that!), and then they told me the staining was because someone was storing her in a laundry room and she got bleach spilled on her. So it seemed right to carry on the grand tradition of this poor little old lady getting stuck in the laundry room, but maybe with a little more respect this time around.

I love my little hooks! These just came from various closets and stuff around the house, I don’t know. The long Turkish towel hides the supply lines which are hooked up under the sink.

Here we find a small sampling of my childhood collection of dog figurines. I’ve gotten rid of most of them, but some were actually kind of cool and maybe I’m pulling it off and maybe I’m not but I don’t care. It’s sort of fun seeing these guys again.

OH RIGHT, THAT HUGE SLAB OF MARBLE. So here’s the deal. Craigslist, $300. It’s a little over 5’x3′, and I bought it with the intention of it being my kitchen island (and therefore not considering it part of the money spent on this room). It’s 2″ thick and came out of this contractor’s garage, where he’d been storing it for the same purpose for the last 30 years. He got it out of another contractor’s garage who’d also been storing it for 30 years, also for that same purpose! The original contractor had pulled it out of a Victorian-era candy shop that was being demolished—can you imagine that?! So ANYWAY it’s huge and probably weighs 400 pounds and I needed to put it SOMEWHERE since custom-kitchen-island is still a ways away, so I just put it right on top of the machines.

I recognize that this sounds like a very bad idea, but I figured….hey. If the washer can stack on top of the dryer, SURELY it can handle a 400 pound slab of natural stone, right??? So I did it, and it’s been three months, and it hasn’t budged, and the machines didn’t collapse, so obviously there’s nothing to worry about here. Lol. If I ever need to call LG out for service, let’s keep this between us OK?

The marble is COVERED in 100 years worth of dings and scratches and pitting and I think that’s pretty perfect, personally. I’ll likely want to seal it with SOMETHING but I’m not super concerned about it continuing to age and patina.

I bought those two big hooks years ago, and it turned out they they make a good rack for the ironing board and iron! For the ~2 times per year that I use them.

There wasn’t really a great spot in this laundry room to hang the drying rack I had in my old laundry room, so instead I put up my Eames Hang-it-All! Anything that needs to dry flat can go on the marble, and anything that needs to be hung can go on a hanger off of this. I love my Hang-it-All and it’s so nice the be using it again after it collected dust for a few years!

It’s hard to get a good picture of, but that little tiny closet under the stairs is my new cleaning cupboard! Those stainless steel shelves used to hang in Anna’s kitchen in Newburgh—they were part of the GRUNDTAL series at IKEA but I’m not sure they still make them. The red bucket has all the cleaning basics so I can carry it around from room to room when I clean and it feels SO ADULT I can’t even stand myself. A cleaning caddy of my very own! Talk about peak experiences.

I mentioned this before, but I re-painted the floor from white (WHICH MADE ME INSANE) to this soft Farrow & Ball pink called “Setting Plaster.” I love it! Painted floors do show a lot of dirt and dust no matter what, I think, but shifting away from white makes it much more manageable. And the rug! I have a weird soft spot for old braided rugs—they just feel so homespun and sweet. I think this one was $10 a while ago and it happens to be the PERFECT size for this room.

OH! And this is neither here nor there, but I did want to circle back on the now-painted-white-but-originally-PURPLE XP drywall I used in this room! This is the Soundbreak XP, which is recommended for rooms you want to contain noise in (or keep it out of), and it’s GREAT. My bedroom is on the other side of this wall, and I really can’t hear the machines when they’re on at all. Cars just driving down the street are louder! I do get a bit of structural vibration during the spin cycles, but nothing dramatic. Everything I was worried about with moving the machines upstairs has thus far turned out to be completely fine. Better than fine! Because I have laundry again!

And it’s sorta cute, IMHO.

The Laundry Room, 2018 Edition! published first on https://carpetgurus.tumblr.com/

[interiorstarweb]

The Laundry Room, 2018 Edition!

At some point in the past couple of years, I got a little…stuck with my own house. I know for a lot of people this feeling might not be especially out of the ordinary, but to me it was novel. The house itself was going through a decidedly “rough patch” in the course of this whole renovation/restoration madness, and to some extent my mental health followed suit. My ability to make decisions and actionable plans seemed to evaporate, which of course made everything feel worse. I’m not sure if I was looking for answers, or trying to remind myself that beautiful things do, in fact, still exist, or just to try to un-block something in my brain, but I found myself looking more and more to visual inspiration.

I’ve had the inkling for a very long time that too much “inspiration” can actually produce the opposite result. I’ve seen this with various clients over the years—they’ll send me a Pinterest board they’ve assembled over some time for a given project, hoping that each image might in some way be represented in the final product. The trouble is that most people aren’t only attracted to one particular aesthetic: they’re attracted to lots of them. It’s much easier to recognize what we think is beautiful than it is to create it. So then, armed with too much inspiration, we try to devise a way to incorporate all these things into a given space, which is usually not possible. Or at least not possible if the goal is to produce a beautiful result. So then we have to start making sacrifices, but now we’ve fallen in love with all of these disjointed elements, all generally done by other people who are really good at this and have lots of money, and we don’t feel confident in making those calls, or even know which calls we have to make, and then we’re paralyzed.

Then, seeking clarity, we bury ourselves in more “inspiration,” as though the image that will make all of this come together could be just the next click away. This, of course, is not especially productive, but it feels like it is.

Being somewhat aware of this, I’ve never used Pinterest except when a client gig required me to. This seemed like a good way to avoid this issue for myself, but I think I failed to appreciate the extent to which the Pinterest mentality has really permeated so many other spaces. The Inspiration Overload is everywhere—Instagram, Facebook, other blogs—and this crept up on me a bit. Soon all of my own work felt so small and shitty and lame, and making simple decisions became an extended exercise in self-doubt and insecurity. Each project in my house became an opportunity to create something amazinggggg but then only if I could remove the very real limitations of time and budget. When it came to my laundry room, I got so caught up in all these things I could see doing: beautiful and spacious custom built-in storage, a sink-to-end-all-sinks, a gorgeous tiled floor, and of course something more interesting for the walls than just painted plaster. Right? I wanted it to look fresh and original and like nothing I’d seen before, while at the same time wanting it to look just like a thousand things I’d seen and bookmarked or screen-capped or otherwise “pinned” without the benefit of organization that I suppose Pinterest provides.

Naturally, once these ideas entered my brain, it became impossible to dispense with them. The floor tile would have cost about $1,000 I didn’t have, but felt so essential to the very premise of renovating the laundry room that I couldn’t see a way around it. Since about half the room would be taken up by the machines, the sink, and storage, I thought maybe I’d compromise and save the expensive tile for the visible part of the floor, but then I’d need the sink and attending cabinetry to be installed first, which of course would mean buying or making those, which I also didn’t have the time/money for. I also really wanted to get the laundry done before being completely occupied with the much more involved kitchen renovation, but in order to do that I’d have to actually start working on it, which would mean finalizing these decisions, which of course I couldn’t do. This all rolled around in my mind for months while my washer and dryer sat useless in the spare room.

I guess when I started this whole renovation “journey,” I felt like the only logical path forward was escalation. Bigger projects. More advanced DIYs. An ever-expanding collection of tools and technical skills that I’d use to create the most amazing spaces I could dream of, because otherwise what’s the point? Putting this much time and effort and money into something should not yield mediocrity.

And then it hit me. It’s not the first time and won’t be the last, but I’m really trying to actively keep it in mind: Not. Everything. Has. To. Be. The. Very. Best. It. Can. Be. IT REALLY IS OK. A lot of things can be improved and changed down the line, when the time and money materializes. It doesn’t all have to happen in one take. At the end of the day, this laundry room has to accomplish one thing: wash my dirty clothes. Everything else is bonus. Also, it’s JUST A LAUNDRY ROOM.

And then something happened: I FELT SO LIBERATED. Without realizing it, and largely out of necessity, I took away the pressure of perfection and replaced it with the momentum of just GETTING IT DONE. Added to this was the challenge of doing it as inexpensively as possible, because the goal was no longer incredible beauty but instead just getting to a place of very basic functionality—and still being able to afford a kitchen stove.

And then another thing happened: in spite of my best efforts, the room actually turned out kinda cute, if you’ll permit me just a little bit of self-congratulation. Because I actually do like my stuff. I actually am generally happy with the decisions I make about my own living space. I actually am capable of making those decisions if I just lighten the fuck up a little and stop freaking out about having the coolest laundry room that my brain can conjure, and creating it in one shot.

Because only a monster would post an after image without a before, here’s the now-laundry room way back when I bought the house! It was one of the first rooms I really tackled, trying to get my renovation sea legs, and I turned it into this office:

I loved that little office, but for various reasons it eventually made way more sense to make this little space into the laundry room. It was sad for a while. Out came the desk, down came the obsolete chimney, in went new electric and plumbing, and up went new drywall and a couple fresh coats of paint annnndddddd…

Laundry room! With a utility sink! And a pink floor! I ain’t mad about it!

By the way, YES. It feels very weird/kinda embarrassing to now have “after” photos of the “after” photos from 4 years ago. I’m also 100% positive that there are those among us who will view this as a downgrade rather than an improvement, but in the context of the whole house I SWEAR this is so much better. Second floor laundry with all this natural light is such an insane luxury. My clothes are literally cleaner because I can see stains and stuff so much more easily, so my pre-treatment game is now ON POINT. I feel very on top of my laundry situation generally and it’s a great feeling.

ALSO, due to my chronic condition of over-sharing—here is the room like a day or two before I snapped the “after” photos. And honestly this is more of what I had in mind when I was all “I HAVE NO NEED FOR CUTE I ONLY NEED CLEAN UNDIES,” but then I sort of liked the additional challenge (/let’s be honest, procrastination) of trying to dress her up a little and add some storage without spending a dime. So I spent the next day just puttering around the house and hanging things up and messing around and it got kind of nice while I wasn’t looking!

Anyway. Point being, that little bit of extra effort was totally worth it and made me feel like I don’t have to really mess with this room for a long time. It also got some of my shit out of indefinite storage and put to good use!

The single biggest new purchase in this room was this cheap plastic utility sink. Various commenters were gravely concerned about this sink choice when I first mentioned it, encouraging me to go with something higher-quality/prettier/ceramic/stone/fireclay/stainless/vintage/antique BUT honestly even trolling Craigslist for some amazing $100 antique soapstone sink STILL involves trolling Craigslist, going to pick up the thing, overcoming the lurking fear of getting Craigslist-murdered, getting it home, cleaning/restoring it, getting it upstairs, probably special-ordering various parts to hook it up, maybe needing to enlist a plumber who wouldn’t show up anyway…SO WHILE I APPRECIATE ALL THE SUGGESTIONS, I am also so very happy that all I had to do was give $95 to Lowe’s and it wasn’t some whole production. When the perfect sink shows up, all the plumbing is there waiting for it.

I still spray-painted the legs black, because I can’t help myself.

Regarding the sink, it is exactly as mediocre as you might expect. It is decidedly un-fancy. It’s very lightweight and therefore doesn’t feel solid or substantial, although I did screw it right into the wall to keep it stable. It stains REALLY easily and stubbornly. It’s also HUGE and was so cheap and I LOVE IT SO MUCH, UNAPOLOGETICALLY. But like, get something nicer if you can swing it. Tell me all about it.

The plumbing under the sink isn’t so great looking either, so I spent 10 minutes making it a little modesty skirt. It’s just a tea towel folded in half with some velcro pinned to it, so it’s all easily removable and the tea towel is intact whenever I want it to be a tea towel again.

Maybe I’ll make a bunch of them so I can change the sink’s outfits seasonally. Hawt lewks for my stained plastic tub sink.

I hung up an old mirror just behind the sink to provide a little backsplash. Problem solved! I kinda love those little plastic clips that hold it up—they were a couple bucks at the hardware store but feel so 60s kitschy. Like not something you should be able to still go buy.

I put up a shelf! My pal Anna gave me like six of those IKEA brackets when she moved and they’ve just been cluttering my basement since. They were white and I spray painted them black and hung them up with some brass screws. Cute! I don’t think IKEA still makes these exact ones, but these are really similar.

The wood came off of the house at some point over the course of renovation, but I’m really struggling to remember what it did in its former life. I guess it doesn’t matter. I gave it a quick sand and a few coats of shellac and BOOM, shelf.

On the shelf is an assortment of things I have accumulated in my short but hoard-y lifetime. The yellowware bowls are antique—one holds detergent pods and the other holds those Affresh tablets that are supposed to rid the washing drum of that swamp smell in the summer. This is to prove once again that I will decant anything.

Tucked into the mirror frame are my two Laundry Idols, my mother below and my grandmother above. My grandma’s favorite task was laundry, and she passed much of her wisdom on to my mother, and I feel some grave sense of duty to, like, not ruin my clothes and bring shame on the family. So they watch over the goings-ons in this room.

I’m sorry I’m not sorry for loving that portrait but I can’t help myself. Her expression is SO GOOD. I bought her at an auction (I think I paid ten actual American greenbacks for that!), and then they told me the staining was because someone was storing her in a laundry room and she got bleach spilled on her. So it seemed right to carry on the grand tradition of this poor little old lady getting stuck in the laundry room, but maybe with a little more respect this time around.

I love my little hooks! These just came from various closets and stuff around the house, I don’t know. The long Turkish towel hides the supply lines which are hooked up under the sink.

Here we find a small sampling of my childhood collection of dog figurines. I’ve gotten rid of most of them, but some were actually kind of cool and maybe I’m pulling it off and maybe I’m not but I don’t care. It’s sort of fun seeing these guys again.

OH RIGHT, THAT HUGE SLAB OF MARBLE. So here’s the deal. Craigslist, $300. It’s a little over 5’x3′, and I bought it with the intention of it being my kitchen island (and therefore not considering it part of the money spent on this room). It’s 2″ thick and came out of this contractor’s garage, where he’d been storing it for the same purpose for the last 30 years. He got it out of another contractor’s garage who’d also been storing it for 30 years, also for that same purpose! The original contractor had pulled it out of a Victorian-era candy shop that was being demolished—can you imagine that?! So ANYWAY it’s huge and probably weighs 400 pounds and I needed to put it SOMEWHERE since custom-kitchen-island is still a ways away, so I just put it right on top of the machines.

I recognize that this sounds like a very bad idea, but I figured….hey. If the washer can stack on top of the dryer, SURELY it can handle a 400 pound slab of natural stone, right??? So I did it, and it’s been three months, and it hasn’t budged, and the machines didn’t collapse, so obviously there’s nothing to worry about here. Lol. If I ever need to call LG out for service, let’s keep this between us OK?

The marble is COVERED in 100 years worth of dings and scratches and pitting and I think that’s pretty perfect, personally. I’ll likely want to seal it with SOMETHING but I’m not super concerned about it continuing to age and patina.

I bought those two big hooks years ago, and it turned out they they make a good rack for the ironing board and iron! For the ~2 times per year that I use them.

There wasn’t really a great spot in this laundry room to hang the drying rack I had in my old laundry room, so instead I put up my Eames Hang-it-All! Anything that needs to dry flat can go on the marble, and anything that needs to be hung can go on a hanger off of this. I love my Hang-it-All and it’s so nice the be using it again after it collected dust for a few years!

It’s hard to get a good picture of, but that little tiny closet under the stairs is my new cleaning cupboard! Those stainless steel shelves used to hang in Anna’s kitchen in Newburgh—they were part of the GRUNDTAL series at IKEA but I’m not sure they still make them. The red bucket has all the cleaning basics so I can carry it around from room to room when I clean and it feels SO ADULT I can’t even stand myself. A cleaning caddy of my very own! Talk about peak experiences.

I mentioned this before, but I re-painted the floor from white (WHICH MADE ME INSANE) to this soft Farrow & Ball pink called “Setting Plaster.” I love it! Painted floors do show a lot of dirt and dust no matter what, I think, but shifting away from white makes it much more manageable. And the rug! I have a weird soft spot for old braided rugs—they just feel so homespun and sweet. I think this one was $10 a while ago and it happens to be the PERFECT size for this room.

OH! And this is neither here nor there, but I did want to circle back on the now-painted-white-but-originally-PURPLE XP drywall I used in this room! This is the Soundbreak XP, which is recommended for rooms you want to contain noise in (or keep it out of), and it’s GREAT. My bedroom is on the other side of this wall, and I really can’t hear the machines when they’re on at all. Cars just driving down the street are louder! I do get a bit of structural vibration during the spin cycles, but nothing dramatic. Everything I was worried about with moving the machines upstairs has thus far turned out to be completely fine. Better than fine! Because I have laundry again!

And it’s sorta cute, IMHO.

The Laundry Room, 2018 Edition! published first on https://novaformmattressreview.tumblr.com/

[billydmacklin]

The Laundry Room, 2018 Edition!

At some point in the past couple of years, I got a little…stuck with my own house. I know for a lot of people this feeling might not be especially out of the ordinary, but to me it was novel. The house itself was going through a decidedly “rough patch” in the course of this whole renovation/restoration madness, and to some extent my mental health followed suit. My ability to make decisions and actionable plans seemed to evaporate, which of course made everything feel worse. I’m not sure if I was looking for answers, or trying to remind myself that beautiful things do, in fact, still exist, or just to try to un-block something in my brain, but I found myself looking more and more to visual inspiration.

I’ve had the inkling for a very long time that too much “inspiration” can actually produce the opposite result. I’ve seen this with various clients over the years—they’ll send me a Pinterest board they’ve assembled over some time for a given project, hoping that each image might in some way be represented in the final product. The trouble is that most people aren’t only attracted to one particular aesthetic: they’re attracted to lots of them. It’s much easier to recognize what we think is beautiful than it is to create it. So then, armed with too much inspiration, we try to devise a way to incorporate all these things into a given space, which is usually not possible. Or at least not possible if the goal is to produce a beautiful result. So then we have to start making sacrifices, but now we’ve fallen in love with all of these disjointed elements, all generally done by other people who are really good at this and have lots of money, and we don’t feel confident in making those calls, or even know which calls we have to make, and then we’re paralyzed.

Then, seeking clarity, we bury ourselves in more “inspiration,” as though the image that will make all of this come together could be just the next click away. This, of course, is not especially productive, but it feels like it is.

Being somewhat aware of this, I’ve never used Pinterest except when a client gig required me to. This seemed like a good way to avoid this issue for myself, but I think I failed to appreciate the extent to which the Pinterest mentality has really permeated so many other spaces. The Inspiration Overload is everywhere—Instagram, Facebook, other blogs—and this crept up on me a bit. Soon all of my own work felt so small and shitty and lame, and making simple decisions became an extended exercise in self-doubt and insecurity. Each project in my house became an opportunity to create something amazinggggg but then only if I could remove the very real limitations of time and budget. When it came to my laundry room, I got so caught up in all these things I could see doing: beautiful and spacious custom built-in storage, a sink-to-end-all-sinks, a gorgeous tiled floor, and of course something more interesting for the walls than just painted plaster. Right? I wanted it to look fresh and original and like nothing I’d seen before, while at the same time wanting it to look just like a thousand things I’d seen and bookmarked or screen-capped or otherwise “pinned” without the benefit of organization that I suppose Pinterest provides.

Naturally, once these ideas entered my brain, it became impossible to dispense with them. The floor tile would have cost about $1,000 I didn’t have, but felt so essential to the very premise of renovating the laundry room that I couldn’t see a way around it. Since about half the room would be taken up by the machines, the sink, and storage, I thought maybe I’d compromise and save the expensive tile for the visible part of the floor, but then I’d need the sink and attending cabinetry to be installed first, which of course would mean buying or making those, which I also didn’t have the time/money for. I also really wanted to get the laundry done before being completely occupied with the much more involved kitchen renovation, but in order to do that I’d have to actually start working on it, which would mean finalizing these decisions, which of course I couldn’t do. This all rolled around in my mind for months while my washer and dryer sat useless in the spare room.

I guess when I started this whole renovation “journey,” I felt like the only logical path forward was escalation. Bigger projects. More advanced DIYs. An ever-expanding collection of tools and technical skills that I’d use to create the most amazing spaces I could dream of, because otherwise what’s the point? Putting this much time and effort and money into something should not yield mediocrity.

And then it hit me. It’s not the first time and won’t be the last, but I’m really trying to actively keep it in mind: Not. Everything. Has. To. Be. The. Very. Best. It. Can. Be. IT REALLY IS OK. A lot of things can be improved and changed down the line, when the time and money materializes. It doesn’t all have to happen in one take. At the end of the day, this laundry room has to accomplish one thing: wash my dirty clothes. Everything else is bonus. Also, it’s JUST A LAUNDRY ROOM.

And then something happened: I FELT SO LIBERATED. Without realizing it, and largely out of necessity, I took away the pressure of perfection and replaced it with the momentum of just GETTING IT DONE. Added to this was the challenge of doing it as inexpensively as possible, because the goal was no longer incredible beauty but instead just getting to a place of very basic functionality—and still being able to afford a kitchen stove.

And then another thing happened: in spite of my best efforts, the room actually turned out kinda cute, if you’ll permit me just a little bit of self-congratulation. Because I actually do like my stuff. I actually am generally happy with the decisions I make about my own living space. I actually am capable of making those decisions if I just lighten the fuck up a little and stop freaking out about having the coolest laundry room that my brain can conjure, and creating it in one shot.

Because only a monster would post an after image without a before, here’s the now-laundry room way back when I bought the house! It was one of the first rooms I really tackled, trying to get my renovation sea legs, and I turned it into this office:

I loved that little office, but for various reasons it eventually made way more sense to make this little space into the laundry room. It was sad for a while. Out came the desk, down came the obsolete chimney, in went new electric and plumbing, and up went new drywall and a couple fresh coats of paint annnndddddd…

Laundry room! With a utility sink! And a pink floor! I ain’t mad about it!

By the way, YES. It feels very weird/kinda embarrassing to now have “after” photos of the “after” photos from 4 years ago. I’m also 100% positive that there are those among us who will view this as a downgrade rather than an improvement, but in the context of the whole house I SWEAR this is so much better. Second floor laundry with all this natural light is such an insane luxury. My clothes are literally cleaner because I can see stains and stuff so much more easily, so my pre-treatment game is now ON POINT. I feel very on top of my laundry situation generally and it’s a great feeling.

ALSO, due to my chronic condition of over-sharing—here is the room like a day or two before I snapped the “after” photos. And honestly this is more of what I had in mind when I was all “I HAVE NO NEED FOR CUTE I ONLY NEED CLEAN UNDIES,” but then I sort of liked the additional challenge (/let’s be honest, procrastination) of trying to dress her up a little and add some storage without spending a dime. So I spent the next day just puttering around the house and hanging things up and messing around and it got kind of nice while I wasn’t looking!

Anyway. Point being, that little bit of extra effort was totally worth it and made me feel like I don’t have to really mess with this room for a long time. It also got some of my shit out of indefinite storage and put to good use!

The single biggest new purchase in this room was this cheap plastic utility sink. Various commenters were gravely concerned about this sink choice when I first mentioned it, encouraging me to go with something higher-quality/prettier/ceramic/stone/fireclay/stainless/vintage/antique BUT honestly even trolling Craigslist for some amazing $100 antique soapstone sink STILL involves trolling Craigslist, going to pick up the thing, overcoming the lurking fear of getting Craigslist-murdered, getting it home, cleaning/restoring it, getting it upstairs, probably special-ordering various parts to hook it up, maybe needing to enlist a plumber who wouldn’t show up anyway…SO WHILE I APPRECIATE ALL THE SUGGESTIONS, I am also so very happy that all I had to do was give $95 to Lowe’s and it wasn’t some whole production. When the perfect sink shows up, all the plumbing is there waiting for it.

I still spray-painted the legs black, because I can’t help myself.

Regarding the sink, it is exactly as mediocre as you might expect. It is decidedly un-fancy. It’s very lightweight and therefore doesn’t feel solid or substantial, although I did screw it right into the wall to keep it stable. It stains REALLY easily and stubbornly. It’s also HUGE and was so cheap and I LOVE IT SO MUCH, UNAPOLOGETICALLY. But like, get something nicer if you can swing it. Tell me all about it.

The plumbing under the sink isn’t so great looking either, so I spent 10 minutes making it a little modesty skirt. It’s just a tea towel folded in half with some velcro pinned to it, so it’s all easily removable and the tea towel is intact whenever I want it to be a tea towel again.

Maybe I’ll make a bunch of them so I can change the sink’s outfits seasonally. Hawt lewks for my stained plastic tub sink.

I hung up an old mirror just behind the sink to provide a little backsplash. Problem solved! I kinda love those little plastic clips that hold it up—they were a couple bucks at the hardware store but feel so 60s kitschy. Like not something you should be able to still go buy.

I put up a shelf! My pal Anna gave me like six of those IKEA brackets when she moved and they’ve just been cluttering my basement since. They were white and I spray painted them black and hung them up with some brass screws. Cute! I don’t think IKEA still makes these exact ones, but these are really similar.

The wood came off of the house at some point over the course of renovation, but I’m really struggling to remember what it did in its former life. I guess it doesn’t matter. I gave it a quick sand and a few coats of shellac and BOOM, shelf.

On the shelf is an assortment of things I have accumulated in my short but hoard-y lifetime. The yellowware bowls are antique—one holds detergent pods and the other holds those Affresh tablets that are supposed to rid the washing drum of that swamp smell in the summer. This is to prove once again that I will decant anything.

Tucked into the mirror frame are my two Laundry Idols, my mother below and my grandmother above. My grandma’s favorite task was laundry, and she passed much of her wisdom on to my mother, and I feel some grave sense of duty to, like, not ruin my clothes and bring shame on the family. So they watch over the goings-ons in this room.

I’m sorry I’m not sorry for loving that portrait but I can’t help myself. Her expression is SO GOOD. I bought her at an auction (I think I paid ten actual American greenbacks for that!), and then they told me the staining was because someone was storing her in a laundry room and she got bleach spilled on her. So it seemed right to carry on the grand tradition of this poor little old lady getting stuck in the laundry room, but maybe with a little more respect this time around.

I love my little hooks! These just came from various closets and stuff around the house, I don’t know. The long Turkish towel hides the supply lines which are hooked up under the sink.

Here we find a small sampling of my childhood collection of dog figurines. I’ve gotten rid of most of them, but some were actually kind of cool and maybe I’m pulling it off and maybe I’m not but I don’t care. It’s sort of fun seeing these guys again.

OH RIGHT, THAT HUGE SLAB OF MARBLE. So here’s the deal. Craigslist, $300. It’s a little over 5’x3′, and I bought it with the intention of it being my kitchen island (and therefore not considering it part of the money spent on this room). It’s 2″ thick and came out of this contractor’s garage, where he’d been storing it for the same purpose for the last 30 years. He got it out of another contractor’s garage who’d also been storing it for 30 years, also for that same purpose! The original contractor had pulled it out of a Victorian-era candy shop that was being demolished—can you imagine that?! So ANYWAY it’s huge and probably weighs 400 pounds and I needed to put it SOMEWHERE since custom-kitchen-island is still a ways away, so I just put it right on top of the machines.

I recognize that this sounds like a very bad idea, but I figured….hey. If the washer can stack on top of the dryer, SURELY it can handle a 400 pound slab of natural stone, right??? So I did it, and it’s been three months, and it hasn’t budged, and the machines didn’t collapse, so obviously there’s nothing to worry about here. Lol. If I ever need to call LG out for service, let’s keep this between us OK?

The marble is COVERED in 100 years worth of dings and scratches and pitting and I think that’s pretty perfect, personally. I’ll likely want to seal it with SOMETHING but I’m not super concerned about it continuing to age and patina.

I bought those two big hooks years ago, and it turned out they they make a good rack for the ironing board and iron! For the ~2 times per year that I use them.

There wasn’t really a great spot in this laundry room to hang the drying rack I had in my old laundry room, so instead I put up my Eames Hang-it-All! Anything that needs to dry flat can go on the marble, and anything that needs to be hung can go on a hanger off of this. I love my Hang-it-All and it’s so nice the be using it again after it collected dust for a few years!

It’s hard to get a good picture of, but that little tiny closet under the stairs is my new cleaning cupboard! Those stainless steel shelves used to hang in Anna’s kitchen in Newburgh—they were part of the GRUNDTAL series at IKEA but I’m not sure they still make them. The red bucket has all the cleaning basics so I can carry it around from room to room when I clean and it feels SO ADULT I can’t even stand myself. A cleaning caddy of my very own! Talk about peak experiences.

I mentioned this before, but I re-painted the floor from white (WHICH MADE ME INSANE) to this soft Farrow & Ball pink called “Setting Plaster.” I love it! Painted floors do show a lot of dirt and dust no matter what, I think, but shifting away from white makes it much more manageable. And the rug! I have a weird soft spot for old braided rugs—they just feel so homespun and sweet. I think this one was $10 a while ago and it happens to be the PERFECT size for this room.

OH! And this is neither here nor there, but I did want to circle back on the now-painted-white-but-originally-PURPLE XP drywall I used in this room! This is the Soundbreak XP, which is recommended for rooms you want to contain noise in (or keep it out of), and it’s GREAT. My bedroom is on the other side of this wall, and I really can’t hear the machines when they’re on at all. Cars just driving down the street are louder! I do get a bit of structural vibration during the spin cycles, but nothing dramatic. Everything I was worried about with moving the machines upstairs has thus far turned out to be completely fine. Better than fine! Because I have laundry again!

And it’s sorta cute, IMHO.

The Laundry Room, 2018 Edition! published first on https://carpetgurus.tumblr.com/