older posts

I had too many blogs to keep track of so I've decided to include old posts into this one...

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

The Lovely Homes

Ali was looking at this listing for a woman who was is in her 30s and was trying to fill an extra room in her apartment. The woman is single, has what appears to be good taste, and a good job in a great field: events. And of course, a really great apartment in a really great city.

Her expectations for a roommate were perhaps the most particular of anyone I'd read recently, most likely because the room she was renting was on the way to the kitchen and the place was basically hers and there really wasn't any reason why she should have to rent it out except that she probably wants some extra money. Way too many expectations and way too particular and way to into her home as evidenced by the vivid descriptions of all the amenities of the place, the things she'd worked on, the things she'd bought for it, the Netflix, the Coffee Bean, the barage of brand names and bragging rights.

Not that I can completely blame her I mean, I'm pretty obsessed with my place and its no where near the awesome location she has although I sure as heck have WAY more room than she does. I bet she pays a fortune to be able to live in Santa Monica and it is without a doubt her proud achievement. That place. Her home.

I think I'd written earlier about how I'd begun judging people based on their homes and when it comes to the matter of being a woman, its one of those things that we have to rank ourselves amongst the other womenfolk. 1) Job 2) Home 3) Man 4) Pretty or Ugly 5) Fat or Skinny 6) Clothes. But those top three are the ones the pretty ones focus on the most and the three that really matter. Unfortunately in this case, size does matter. If your studio apartment is bitchin' and done up in West Elm and CB2 or whatnot, it matters not to a woman that has a condo with three bedrooms and has moderate to actually boring taste. More room, more money, more ego. Us minimalists know that size doesn't matter, its what you do with what you have that matters because that shows character and taste and that should be a female virtue if we had to be stripped of 1/2 of them. Taste. I wish I could add virtue to the virtues but beggars can't be something something.

So this 30 year old, she's gonna be bringing in some poor sap of a roommate who can live off of basically a suitcase to worship her style. She will even enjoy the saps that show up to check the place out because she will be proud of showing off her home because when people come over, that's what you're doing. Being a show off. A showy showy show off. Hey look at me, look at my home, don't I have style? Don't I have taste? Essentially saying: Don't you wish you were me?

Is envy really the ultimate female compliment? It seems like it at times. It starts young. I would kill for your legs, your butt, your hair. I totally want your boyfriend, husband, date. This may well be why women are so willing to cheat with a friend's significant other. I envied you, he wanted me even if it was a second, I jumped on it. Envy that.

We are sick sick creatures. So fragile, so wretched. So profoundly empty. Our trophy cases constantly need filling, the holes in our hearts dying for a fill. Its what separates the girls from the women, the women from the men, the women from the women. Constantly wanting more and constantly displaying our homes, hanging the blue ribbons, and polishing the 1st prize trophy.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

XX

My grandmother has been raising ten children, about 1o grandchildren, and at least five grandchildren, all by herself for about 35 years. Since her husband died, she's remained unmarried and the cornerstone of our family.

I've never met a family love a child as much as our family does. When a child is brought into our parties or homes, its not just left in the stroller and admired for its aesthetic value. It's picked up, examined, interrogated, and passed to the next family member. This continues for child after child and after grandma, the kids determine everything we do. No one really ever babysits for our family, the kids just go where we go. And somehow they have this tick in their minds that works when we go out that instantly bonds them to the relatives they barely know. They actually obey the grown-ups that aren't their parents. I've sat and watched my aunts and uncles and cousins interact with their children and sometimes it hasn't been the world's greatest parenting even by their own admittance and there's a lot of this certain type of Mexican yelling at the kids thing going on but the kids are the proof in the pudding. They're generally terrific kids.

Only three couples so far have made it of my mother's ten siblings with one uncle who has never married. Two unrelated aunt and uncle died and their spouses have not remarried. My mother had been a single mother for about eight years when she married my step-father becoming one of two of her siblings to be married. There stands only one couple that has been married for about 15 years that has two small girls that were never married before.

The cousins have three divorces amongst thirty with all of them divorcing around the age of 30. It breaks our hearts to hear of it but we take the side of the family member that belongs to us because well, we're probably right. Still, unless the ex was a calculating rich bitch that refuses to acknowledge that the father of her baby can visit his child, then we are usually okay with the ex. This one uncle's ex-wife is so popular with the family that she is invited to parties more often then he is (partly because we can't get a hold of him) and my father who was divorced to mom in '84 and visits my grandma as much as any of her own children do.

These things stagger the mind. How is it possible that a person can be such a great parent, and fail as a spouse?