This Isn't HGTV, Missy

I don’t think it’s a secret anymore that my husband loves HGTV. His happiest moment of any given day is when he flips on the TV and that channel is still on from the night before.  His favorite HGTV shows are the real estate ones, where people are looking for houses to buy. These shows are as formulaic as Law & Order: The buyers have over-the-top expectations, the wife gets her panties in a knot and gets very bitchy, the Realtor gets frustrated and starts rolling her eyes and having aside conversations into the camera, the husband gets fed up and wanders over to the neighbor’s garage and has a beer with a guy he knows he’ll never live next to because of a sump pump (off camera). These shows are popular, despite the lack of a single sympathetic character. By the end of these shows, I don’t want anyone to get a house or a commission. 

And then there are the shows where a couple half my age are looking for a vacation home in Belize or Costa Rica or some other Hawaii-like place. Reminding us viewers that these properties come with a staff of housekeepers and gardeners is just mean. The wife demands beach front and a spectacular view, the kids gush about the surfing, and the husband wanders over to the neighbor’s villa where he gets held up for drug money (off camera). I don’t think I’m alone when I say that when I watch these shows I hate people who can afford to buy vacation homes while still in their 20s. 

“What does he do for a living?” I’ll ask my husband. “And if they don’t pick the first house, they’re stupid and they deserve the scorching, breeze-less late afternoon that they’re getting with those other two houses.”

My husband hates when I comment on the HGTV shows. They bring out the sarcastic troll in me. I start out criticizing the buyers’ inability to see the bones of a house and I end the show by making fun of their clothes and the way they walk. And the fact that they say “the bones of a house.”

“You’re kidding me. You really are going to pass on this place because of the kitchen wallpaper,” I snarl from the couch. “And lose that belt. Gawd.”

My husband gets up and moves to the other couch. 

So now that we ourselves are looking for houses (off camera) I’m actually living my least favorite TV shows. But I find myself trying to be like them. 

“I like how they’ve used the space here in this ridiculously tiny powder room that is unfit for full-sized humans,” I say, trying to sound like Anne from the House Hunters episode where she and Craig want to downsize but keep saying that the houses were so much smaller than their old place. She tried hard to come up with something positive to say about each room, but anyone could see that she was not on board with the whole reduce-and-simplify plan. That is so Craig.

I’ve also been trying to pretend like I’m on House Hunters so I won’t slip into whiny, critical, snarky behavior - at least not as early as the first house. Also so I’ll dress better and not use cliches. This all fits in well with my Pretend Your Way to a Better You campaign, which I was all into in 2010. Pretending I’m on House Hunters could revive that movement for me and make me a better person as I look for a house. 

Off camera, well, that’s another story.

~ ~ ~

Diane's book "Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap, and My Accent Helped Me Survive Nine Moves" will be available at Amazon.com in May. 

Hello, City Life!

I’m trying like the dickens to live the life of Lisa Douglas before she chose chores over stores in Green Acres. But real life and 50 years of America’s urban evolution keep getting in my way.

I’m constantly reminded that I’m not in Kansas anymore. Nor am I in rural Hooterville. Nor any of the 14 suburbs in which I’ve lived.

My grocery store has a cop on patrol inside. She is friendly but not talkative. Last night I watched two police officers pull a guy off the train I was getting on, put him in handcuffs and lead him away. The open seat was still warm - but dry - so I have no idea what he did to deserve a police escort.

My apartment is so small, I couldn’t fit another person or thing in here if I tried. Yet I still can lose my cell phone. I’m sure that’s what Oli-vah was thinking when he beat feet for the country.

Last night, my half of the dinner bill was almost $100. Granted, it was a swanky spot filled with Google and Apple Generation Zs who seem to be on a constant happy hour break from all that important work they do that no one over 30 knows how to do. Now I know why Panera is so crowded with people more like me. You can get a Premium Signature Panini for under $8 and Friday’s soup-of-the-day is Low Fat All Natural Chicken Noodle, which is delicious and nutritious, thank you very much.

My apartment lobby door has a sign on it that can be found on the doors of pretty much every public building in the city, warning me that upon entering, I will get cancer and come to reproductive harm. The state of California is as concerned for my well being as the personalized ads I get on the Internet: “Lose your belly fat!” “Mother of the Bride Dress!” “Signs You’ll Get Cancer!” and “Exercise Your Brain!”

My Walgreens has a bath soap aisle that is constantly being rearranged, organized and cleaned by a bustling, energetic woman . . . but, why every day? It occurs to me that she doesn’t work at Walgreens. She might be one of the rare OCD homeless. 

My style has changed drastically. All of my Florida clothes look ridiculous here. I’ve had to hurry out and buy jackets and close-toed shoes. I will say, though, this cup of tea suits me better. When I leave home, I only have to remember my apartment key and my transit card. Sunscreen is not necessary. Lipstick is optional. Femmy perfume is frowned upon.

I love to talk about how to adjust to a new life after you move. Of all of my moves, this one is by far the biggest stretch for me. This is the first time I’ve moved coast to literal coast; the first time I’ve done a big move without kids; the first time I ever had to fly a dog; and the first time I’ve moved to a big city. 

It might not be Park Avenue, but I do have a nice “pent-house-view” of the Bay Bridge light show. Dahling I love you, so I think I’ll stick it out here and see what unfolds.

~ ~ ~

Diane's book "Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap, and My Accent Helped Me Survive Nine Moves" will be available at Amazon.com in May. 

Rocking the Temporary Life

Move #2 of 4 is done and I'm as settled as I'm going to be in a temporary apartment in San Francisco. There's a reason I devoted a whole chapter of my book on temporary living. If you've never done it, you might not think it's a big deal. But let me assure you, temporary living during a move is the weirdest transition state you'll ever be in. You are living someone else's lifestyle with someone else's stuff. The only good thing about temporary living is that it's temporary.

"Well, at least we'll get a feel for what it would be like to live here," my husband said. Which does us no good whatsoever, because we will probably never live in a microscopic apartment with modern knick-knacks, hotel soap, lamps with no apparent on-off switch, and only one frying pan.

Here's what else I have for my temporary apartment life:

* A bunch of cardboard boxes and packing materials that I don't know what to do with. This apartment is too tiny to shove them anywhere. I don't know any of my neighbors or I'd try to pass them off on someone who is moving out and needs them. Also I don't know enough about the trash disposal rules and regs or where the security cameras are to know how easy it would be to abandon them in a hallway  in Building 2. To recycle them probably involves cutting and folding that is beyond my interest right now.

* A set of wine glasses and a bottle of wine that the relo welcoming committee left for us, along with some artichoke spread and crackers. The only reason we didn't wolf that down on sight last night is that we were too exhausted to find the corkscrew and we didn't have enough upper-body strength to open a jar. That won't last another night, I assure you.

* Photos of us in frames that my husband's new employer so sweetly had set up here before we arrived. It was a gesture so nice that when I walked in the door, after a grueling day of travel, and saw a picture of  us with our Florida friends on the beach, I about burst into tears. Sentimentality is a dangerous thing to a woman who is moving.

* One of those nicer-hotel beds with 16 pillows and layers of duvets, blankets and sheet-like things. It took me 45 minutes to make the bed this morning and it still didn't look like it did when we walked in, which is just like the Pottery Barn beds. Mine looked like the Princess and the Pea when she was 6 and was practicing cleaning up her own room.

What I don't have is:

* My magnifying make-up mirror. So in the next up-to-6-months, if you see a photo of me with a big black hair growing out of my chin, please private-message me. Thanks. (If you could give me a rough location of where it is, I can probably take care of it - I do have tweezers.) If you see unsightly facial hair after I get my mirror back, you will kindly keep your opinions to yourself.

* Any measuring cups or measuring spoons.

* An umbrella.

* Any hand cream or body lotion whatsoever. I could dry up and blow like a crispy old leaf right down King Street right now.

I'm making the best of the situation and am doing some matchmaking. For instance, the wine glasses look to be roughly 1 cup, so I measure the dog's food in fine glassware with a stem. The dog is suitably impressed with herself over this.  It's going to be an interesting couple of months.

~ ~ ~

Diane's book "Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap and My Accent Helped Me Survive 9 Moves" will be available at Amazon.com in May. 

When Perfect Timing is Actually the Worst Timing

Whose idea was it to put out a book on moving at the exact same time that I'm moving? This ranks up there with My Permed Bangs Calamity of 1984 in decisions I've made that seemed full of hope and light until it was too late.

My book, Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap and My Accent Helped Me Survive 9 Moves will be outdated before it sells a single copy. I'm moving again, which makes that 10 moves. Although that number is questionable, because I haven't decided whether I should count the move into my first house, the big blue farm house in Poland Township, Ohio, or if I should count all the places we rented before we became reluctant and weary homeowners.

I know it's not irony but it's something that my book is scheduled to come out of editing on Wednesday, the same day I'm moving across the country.

So while it seems foolish that I haven't updated my header on this blog yet, I haven't developed my book website, I have nowhere to send my Tweeps in my clever and relevant Twitter postings, I really don't have time, because I'm spending hours a day staring at our suitcases and trying to will my clothes to fit in them. (I think I'm getting closer to success. I will continue to try, just in case.)

This past week we had a big going-away party, several last dinners with close friends, six showings of our house, change-of-address notifications, high-value inventory sheets completed, and the final arrangements of moving our dog with us. (The dog transport process is more complicated than you can imagine, especially those of you with small dogs who can sit at your feet during a flight. Our dog's flight gets another $300 added to it every day, so we better hurry up and get her on that plane before we can't afford a house of our own.)

We move in two days. At the same time as I prepare for that move into a temporary apartment in San Francisco, I am pre-planning a smaller move into a Florida apartment, the big move into a soon-I-hope San Francisco house, my son's move to DC,  the selling of our current house, and the purchase or rent of everything else. So right now I'm a cleaning lady, a house stager, a CPA, a storage expert, a negotiator and a philanthropic donor of old Christmas decorations that won't fit in any of the aforementioned places. There's little time to be an author. Just now, as I was writing the previous paragraph, my husband yelled in, "Can you please come back in here and listen to me talk about this offer out loud?" So apparently, I can't even be a proper blogger either.

When you hear from me again, I'll be settled into my new temporary apartment and I'll have all the time in the world to write my little heart out. Don't believe me? You haven't read my chapter on How to Use Denial and a Good Bottle of Chardonnay to Lull/Trick Yourself Into Agreeing to a Move.

` ` ` ` `

Diane's book "Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap and My Accent Helped Me Survive 9 Moves" will be available at Amazon.com in May. Her promotion of said book will have to wait until she unpacks the wine glasses.

Movecation Recommended

As a self-proclaimed moving expert, I will now update my moving advice to include the following:

"Never . . . "

Wait.

"Always . . . take a vacation approximately 10 days before a big move. Your husband and your Realtor will be just fine."

You would be surprised at how capable your husband is in cleaning the house for a showing. He can make the bed, as it turns out. My self-worth took a small dip in finding out that I wasn't the only one who could clear the counters, turn on all the lights, and make the house look like it was a set from Roseanne after the Connors won the lottery, and make it look so effortless.

And since this is my 10th big move (and arguably the biggest one yet because it is coast to coast and involves flying a dog) I'm shocked to find out that if you ignore your Realtor's advice to meet all deadlines on paperwork and wait a few showings to clean the bug droppings out of the drawers, the world will not come to an end.

Speaking of vacations, look what I found in both hotels this trip, which I am totally in favor of:

Shampoo, conditioner and shower gel containers that you cannot physically, legally or spiritually take home in your suitcase. This removes a huge burden off my shoulders. You know how I love to talk about hotel shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, body lotion, soap and whether or not we should take it home.  I mean, think about it: If it was so great, why didn't you use it all when you were at the hotel? You brought your own good shampoo, but you take the little bottles home, where they sit in your closet pushing you one step closer to being a hoarder.

I'm downsizing in this move, so last week I went through my closet after making a speech to myself about freeing myself from material possessions, which included repeating quotes from the Dalai Lama and Rod McKuen poems. I came across two huge Ziploc bags of tiny hotel toiletries, which I had squirreled away in suitcases from hotels all over the United States, Europe and Great Britain. I had intended to donate them to a woman's shelter or something, but I kept missing Christmas. It seems no one really wants these tiny bottles. At least not at a seasonal convenient time for me. Not to mention the miniature sewing kits (with not enough thread to even sew on a goddamn button) and shower caps (not even worn by ghetto teens anymore).

These bags of personal cleanliness in miniature are gone. Gone, I tell you. If there isn't room in my new place for the foosball table, there certainly isn't room for soap that smells like a gas station bathroom air freshener and hand lotion with as much alcohol content as the Bloody Mary I had at the hotel breakfast buffet.

Although I wasn't home to start purging the house of nonsensical items in anticipation from our upcoming move, I did my part by not bringing home free toiletries from the hotels where I stayed.

Did I not say I was a moving expert?

` ` ` ` `

Diane's book "Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap and My Accent Helped Me Survive 9 Moves" will be available at Amazon.com in May. Order your signed copy quickly, but not before she finds the box of pens in her 10th move, from Florida to San Francisco.

Switching Gears

And since this might be the last chance I get to run a photo that has nothing to do with anything, here’s a funny one. Even though I know those kids didn’t write that (the G is a give-away, Dad), it’s funny anyway.

Since my very first blog post, when I wrote about my oldest son’s 21st birthday and how old that made me feel, Just Humor Me has been the moody, ADHD, rambling, weird cousin of the blogosphere.

“What’s your blog about?” people would ask.

I never knew what to say. Sometimes I summed it up by saying I wrote about emo-shopping at Hot Topic, colonoscopies, the FAFSA, and that one time when I accidentally got my hair done. For almost six years, I wrote about whatever funny thing I had encountered or was on my mind when I sat down to write. If there was a piece of coral stinking up my back patio, I wrote about that. If I had a dinner party and forgot to put pasta in the pasta primavera, I wrote about that. If I went to Comedy Driving School, learned the Michael Jackson Thriller dance, or found British food that sounded like canned private parts, I wrote about that, that and that.

I had ups - when I had so much levity in my life that I was writing upwards of three times a week, and laughing like mad all the while. And I had downs, like the time I wrote a metaphorical blog post about my car having a squeaky wheel and how annoying it was, and most of the comments I got were referrals to mechanics. My most Tea Party friend not only didn’t get the analogy, he took that opportunity to make fun of my Prius. Not everyone gets my humor, but that was a double fail. For the past year, I’ve been not so much running out of things to write about, but thinking Just Humor Me has run its course.

I’m putting out a (hopefully) funny book about my past nine or 10 moves (who’s counting?) and I’d like to switch gears and blog about moving. Also, I think it’s time that I wrote a real blog. In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t really a blog. It’s a column. Because I’m old school and that’s how I write. But I hear old dogs can learn new tricks, so I’m going to take a shot at writing real blog posts. Short, snappy, updatey, what’s-on-my-mind blog posts. That’s right: Eat my dust, Erma Bombeck.

I’m not sure how that will work. Or how well I’ll do at specializing in one topic. I’ll miss being able to write about the lady that ran the gas station in Hubbard or candy bars I can't find or my misadventures in dog training or how much I hate toilet paper commercials or how much I love Hoarders. 

Methinks my Facebook posts are about to get a lot longer. :P  ROFLMAO

KISS and Make Up

Have you ever been to Sephora or Mac or a department store makeup counter and seen a woman sitting in a highchair getting her makeup done? 

What an idiot. Right? I am more envious of the women in line who are buying gratuitously overpriced makeup than the chick who’s getting the good stuff put on her face for free. Because in order to get the makeup put on you by the expert, you have to do it in front of everyone in your tri-county area.

So of course I did it.

My husband and I were at Sephora (yes, they let him in) to buy our daughter a gift card for Christmas when the makeup sales lady told us that if we bought her a $125 gift card, she would get a free makeup consultation/demonstration/application/makeover for free. 

It was a week before Christmas and my husband possibly had just realized he didn’t have a gift for me yet, so he said, “Maybe you would like one of those thingydoodles, too.” 

So I said, yes, sure, I’d love to have a makeup consuldemocation. 

The day of my appointment was the same day my husband sliced open his finger on a new knife. I had to race to Sephora from the Urgent Care. During his stitches, whenever I looked at my watch, my husband would say, “Oh, I’m sorry if my nearly amputated index finger of my right hand - and I’m right-handed - is keeping you from your important appointment. What is it again? Oh, that’s right. Getting your makeup done.”

Other than racing there and starting late, it all went swimmingly. I got over my humiliation of sitting embarrassingly close to the busy checkout line and even snapped a photo of myself with the mud mask on. Or was that the GlamGlow Super Sexy Super Radiant Tingling & Exfoliating Mud Mask ($69)? Yes, I believe it was.

I humbly sat still while my makeup expert told me how I could make my nose look smaller and thinner, my 54-year-old crevices look more like 45-year-old crevices, and how my fear of black mascara is irrational.

“So are you going anywhere special tonight?” she asked me as she was applying what felt like way too much blush. Or was that too much Nars Glimmer Blush Orgasm Peachy Pink With Shimmer ($28). Yes, I’m sure it was.

I was embarrassed to say I was planning to stay home and watch a Netflix movie about Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and finish the Williams-Sonoma peppermint bark.

“Well, depending on how I look, I might have to go to dinner. Or something,” I said weakly.

I called my husband on my way home from the mall and suggested we go to dinner. Or something. He had sufficiently recovered from the stitches, the local anesthetic hadn’t worn off yet, so he suggested we hurry up and get the first glass of wine in, as to kind of dovetail on the numbing.

My daughter snapped a picture of us before we left for dinner and it wasn’t until the next day when I saw the photo that I realized I had on way too much makeup. Maybe too much Dr. Jart + Water Fuse Smart Gel BB Ultra Hydrating + Memory Activated Formula ($36) and definitely too much BareMinerals Remix Ready Eyeshadow 4.0 ($30). Also, my fear of black mascara was well founded, as it turns out.

It reminded me of the time I made the mistake of telling my haircut guy that I was going to the Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony that night and he did my hair. As in getting your hair done. As in I got my hair done for the Football Hall of Fame induction tonight. 

As I looked at my makeup demo face in the mirror, I was grateful I hadn’t had a hair appointment on the same day. This kind of makeup might be fine for '70s bands and some other women, but not me. I thought about at least wiping off the lipstick. But it was Buxom Fully Loaded Lip Plumper ($19) and I couldn’t afford to waste it.

What an idiot.