I’ve put this under “All About Moi,” but maybe it should really be under “Politics.” One comment I read a million years ago was by a Russian (I think) director who mentioned that American films are extremely political. When called on this statement—don’t we, after all, make mass market apolitical films?—he said, In every film, someone opens one of these giant refrigerators and it’s full of food! That’s an amazingly political statement!
I think about that a lot when I watch movies. Also, when I look at kitchens.
Today I went to the park with the kids, and while they played in the fountain I looked at some of the most dynamic political material I’ve seen in a while.
It’s available at any bookstore or magazine stand. Go ahead, take a peek. It’ll flabbergast you.
These incendiary political tracts go under names like “Better Homes and Gardens Kitchen and Bath.”
Page after page of loving tribute to expensive modifications to already wonderful houses. Kitchens enlarged to encompass 6-burner stoves and double ovens (plus microwave, plus warming drawer), extra beverage refrigerators, prep sinks.
The amazing quantity of raw materials required to create these countertops and built-ins and imported Italian tile backsplashes. And then what’s needed to use the kitchen as intended! The amount of water that flows through the double sink and the two dishwashers and the pot filler connected to the stove… How much gas does a 36,000 BTU stove burn in a minute?
The reason I had the magazine in my hot little hands, of course, is that I want all that stuff. Here, now, on the floor…on the kitchen floor, at least.
We had the floors done this summer: out with the ugly old stained orange carpeting, in with the lovely maple wood. Except we’re not done with the floors yet: they have to be sanded and sealed, and that’s not going to happen until we get the interiors painted. They desperately need painting. Between the overused (and currently to me abhorrent) peach walls and the decorations left by my budding Picassos, they need painting.
And once we got started talking about painting, of course… did we want to change any of the furniture? If we turn the kids’ toy room into a TV room, should we get a new (giant, flat) TV?
In addition to all of this nonsense, the room we spend the most time in save the bedrooms, the kitchen, started crying out for attention. The cabinets are all in this dark-stained oak that we’ve never liked to begin with but now looks terrible next to the maple floors. Do we paint them? Reface them? Replace them? They are kind of old and beaten down— the lazy susan in the corner cabinet doesn’t even turn. And the shelves where the pots and pans are has some kind of dust or something coming in.
The gigantic swath of fluorescent lights on the ceiling that we’ve hated since the day we moved in? Well, one bank of lights gave out entirely, and in the other bank one of the three bulbs gave out. On the electric stove (that we’ve hated, etc.), the biggest burner gave up.
But we can’t just go get a gas cooktop to replace it, even though we’re pretty sure there’s a gas line to the kitchen. The cooktop is in the island. The electric stove has a built-in fan; what would we do about the gas one? Did we want to install a hood over the island in the middle of the room? Or should we, you know…
…remodel entirely? Make the kind of kitchen we’d really, really like?
With the extra sinks and the dedicated baking area and extra ovens (hey, after all, I do cook now, you know!) and…
Just thinking about it makes me breathe a little harder. And the pictures! Oh, the pictures! So fabulously laid out, undoubtedly air-brushed, but just a little (the whole thing couldn’t be fake, could it?)! My kitchen could be one of those glossy, perfect, stainless steel and marble palaces too! A veritable temple to American consumption and use of resources! I could come home to one of those superfabulous testaments to our position in the universe! Yes! Yes! I want mine, dammit!
No idea how we’d pay for a complete kitchen remodel, not to mention the other things we’re thinking about. (Every bathroom needs updating. In some cases…a lot of updating. And in my wilder moments, I wonder what going down to the studs and redoing the floor plan might gain us, because I’m convinced there are better ways of laying out this house.) Maybe after Simon gets out of preschool and we don’t have that monthly expense. Or I make some money. And the stock market doesn’t, you know, crash or anything. Or we could just go wildly into debt and get a home equity loan! It’s the American way! It’s my due, baby!
Wow: those pictures. Woo. Oh yeah. I’ll be back in a minute, I just gotta have a private moment in the bathroom.
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