Wednesday, March 16, 2011

If the toast had had legs, it would have run the hell away

In my last post, I said my trip to Assachusetts to stay with my mother was colorful, and I wasn't lying. But I'll get to that in a minute.

The trip started off on rocky footing. My mother drove down the night before so she could follow me back to her house the next morning. I told her that wasn't necessary, but before I'd hung up the phone she was parked in front of my house.

Off we went.

We left Mulletville when the two kids would need a nap, but Diddly woke up crying 20 minutes into the trip so I pulled over and fed him. We got back on the road. Thirty minutes later Junior started crying. He said he was going to throw up, so I pulled over, this time into a Friendly's.



While I was comforting Junior, my mother jumped into my car.

"I'm coming with you," she hissed. "I'll leave my car here."

"That's silly. We're fine. Junior's tired. He needs a nap."

"We have to get back on the road. You can't do it alone. The children are falling apart. Go! Go! Go!"

(Have I mentioned that my mother is someone easily shaken by stressful situations? The woman could talk you off a bridge.)

Off we went.

Thirty minutes later we realized we had no idea what town we'd left her car in. We called my step-father and begged him to call every Friendly's in southern Assachusetts and ask if there was a blue Subaru in the lot. He said no. A pipe had burst in their basement. It was flooded. There was no hot water. I shouldn't stay there. And he wasn't calling Friendly's.

"The gods are conspiring against us!" my mother cried.

I told her I should go home, but she remembered that her sister, who lived nearby, was in Florida for the week.

"We can stay at her house. It'll be perfect."

By that point I was exhausted. I'd been up since 4 a.m. I'd packed the car full of the kids' shit. I was worried about Junior's stomach. Neither kid had napped. I just wanted to get somewhere.

Off we went.

If only I'd known that a funhouse of visual vomit awaited. In the years since I'd been to my aunt's house, she had apparently developed a crazy ass obsession with colored textiles.

There were stripes and checkers.





Plaids.



Florals.



Gingham.



And then. Then there were the polka dots.



Every



where



you



looked.



Nothing



was



safe



from those



damn



little



dots



and circles.



I never realized how much I appreciate solid colors, how comforting my home of naked, unpatterned walls and furniture are. Quite honestly, this is my idea of hell



I'll take two crying kids, a frenzied mother, a lost car and no sleep over this



any day.

What about you? Do you polka until you puke? Does your dinnerware make people seasick? Do busy patterns brighten your day or bogart your brain? You know where I stand.

P.S. Special thanks to Chuck, who located my mother's car in a town called Seekonk.

14 comments:

Leigh Anne said...

My eyes! My eyes! I thought it would never stop! Were you able to actually sleep in that house?

P.S. I can't imagine what those plates look like with food on them. Yuck.

brokenteepee said...

Thank you for making my eyes go black and white.

I am going to go feed my goats. They are safe colors: brown, black and white.

Not a polka dot to be found

tootertotz said...

I feel like I had a lot to drink last night. I didn't actually have a lot to drink last night so you get the credit for sharing the dynamic color/patterns from your aunt's house.

Sounds like your mom and her ability to blow it up could be entertaining/exhausting depending on the day. And in this case, entertaining and exhausting in the same day.

Glad you survived the week and are still 'with it' enough to blog about it!

Anonymous said...

No thank you - no patterns! Ye gads can't imagine eating off those plates - not something I would want to face first thing in the morning...

VandyJ said...

I like my patterns as an accent, not the main clashing focal point. A house like that could easily make someone ill.
I'm going to take my spinning head and go rest a while. Hope you didn't have to spend to long there.

JoAnna said...

i know exactly where seekonk is. i might have to ask you where your mother lives. it sounds suspiciously like it might be somewhere i know.

i like polka dots. a little bit. i have the starkest living room. so little on the walls. even less on the walls in my bedroom. i think i'm afraid to over do it, so i leave the walls empty.

Mama Badger said...

Ooooh, now I'm woozy. Your Aunt apparently didn't learn early that patterns are meant to be accent pieces, huh? Whew. I try to limit to one pattern per room, if that. The kids must have loved it, though.

Kathy said...

My husband and I stayed at The Contemporary at Disney the first time we went. We wouldn't stay there again because of the puke factor. What they mean by "contemporary" is "contemporary for 1970 something when the place was built." It gave us a headache.

But OMG, this is far, far worse! I'm glad everything turned out OK. But are you still seeing spots?

Magpie said...

Hysterical. What did your mother think of you wandering through with the camera?

Our Crazy Life said...

OMG I thought I was going to have a seizure before those dots stopped! Very funny though!

Leanne said...

I LOVE colour..yes, with a 'U'. I lOVE polka dots and I really love everything your Aunt has put together - it's FUN! But do I have ANY of this stuff in my house? Hell, no.

And uh, does she read your blog?

Frogs in my formula said...

My aunt doesn't know what a blog is, but after complaining about the dots for a few days I had a hard time convincing my mother I was taking photos for decorating ideas.

Nanc Twop said...

I can't forget these.

Assuming kids inherit 'taste' genes from both sides, maybe you'd better prepare yourself for their teen years.

Wine, anyone?... ;-D

Keely said...

WOW. That is...a little much.

I like solid colors. I like design space. Patterns freak me out, frankly.

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