Heady Monsoon

It’s time to celebrate National Headache Awareness Week!

You should also try to avoid foods containing a natural headache-promoting substance known as tyramine. These include red wine and other types of alcohol, aged cheeses, peanuts, pickled foods, overly ripe avocados, and chocolate.

That’s just great! Nuts and pickles are the only things I’m supposed to be snacking on right now, thanks to that damn South Beach Diet. Say no to chocolate – what a ghastly idea! Add to that manchego cheese and whiskey -- and virtually everything that I’ve consumed in the past three months is off limits. Screw it -- I’ll just pop a pill and put those nuts back in my mouth. Take that whatever way you want to, honey.

Anyway, I am in the midst of my own self-created headache: a total home makeover. It’s going...ummm...it’s going. I am 31% completed. But it’s a challenge when you have a tiny little un-air-conditioned bohemian hideaway and you live in St. Louis, which is not exactly well known for being hospitable in the summer. I’d say it was like Hell. But Hell is probably nicer and not so humid.

To combat the heat, I installed a window A.C. and I started rearranging everything I own so that my bed and desk could be in one room. That way, I could sleep and watch online porn in the comfort of 72 degrees. For most folks, moving two things around would not result in The China Syndrome – but I got pissed at how everything was arranged in my apartment and...well...meltdown. I went from The China Syndrome to The Burning Bed to The War of the Roses within the space of 4 hours.

The result was 34 years of crap being amassed in big piles and every single stick of furniture, every book, EVERYTHING I own is now being assessed and evaluated for its relevancy in my life to its position in my living space. In the back of my mind, I keep hearing, "Surfaces.....surfaces...."

This is Decorating Spaces: Uncut and Hardcore. Or an Oprah show, if that Nate fella was a neurotic, overweight former club kid with a passion for Wonder Woman collectibles with nary a dime to spend at Centro Ikea Target Goodwill.

So, anyway... the volume of crap that I own is slowly being reorganized and grouped and then regrouped and moved hither and yon after being re-regrouped. I’ve even started dusting, which is generally something I do once a decade. Last night, for instance, I stood in my bathroom washing 20 plastic stacking crates (that sounds fancier than milk crates….but that’s what they were). It was quite a sight: me in the shower with some milk crates and a loofah. But they’re sparkly and dust free!

In order to explain why this is such a challenge for me, please review this post on my housekeeping skills. Then consider that I will not throw away a book. In addition to that obsession with the written word, I consider every magazine bearing the image of Linda Evangelista, Madonna and Kristen McMenamy a sacred testament to the powers of beauty, clever photo angles and pickle eating. These magazines must be revered with a just-so placement on the bookshelf.

Add to that, I have to contend with a book collection that spans from Today’s Mobile Homes: Decorating Your Trailer with Style to Susan Dey’s Secrets on Boys, Beauty and Popularity to Suzanne Somers’ 365 Ways to Change Your Life. Mix in my collection of hardcore porn on VHS (just in case the internets fail) and 1960’s decorative plates (featuring almost every state in the grand ole U. S. of A ) – and you’ve not even touched 10% of the knick-knack clutter that I call mines. Actually there is so much crap that it boggles the mind -- but it’s my crap and I love it, even though I doubt I’d earn more than a hundred seventy-eight dollars and 22 cent if I tried to sell it all on e-Bay.

So… it’s moving along slowly and it’s hours of work every night before I eventually trudge off to my 72 degree bedroom. It certainly would be nice for that Ty Pennington character to be up in my bed when I collapse every night, but his home skills would be wasted at this moment. I am, however, planning to build a sofa-love-seat-thing with built in bookshelves and storage – so I’m leaving open the option for any variety of handy men to be around once I get a hold of a table saw and vintage upholstery. I can stack and move shit – but power tools with sharp blades with my crappy eyesight and klutzy behavior and you’re talking a trip to the emergency room.

And while, right now, this is a headache that’s been 34 years in the making – I’m honestly just tickled with how things are turning out.

More updates tomorrow!

Posted June 7, 2005 12:34 PM