Columns 2006

A real Alaska chair

It’s the start of summer visitor season. Not that the visitors are actually on their way up. No, there are still pockets of snow on the ground and I don’t know what your visitors are like, but mine prefer Alaska without snow.  So they haven’t aimed the RVs, campers, cars and trucks north yet.  And Alaska Airlines is not yet overbooked with people looking out the window and wondering how there could be that much land between Alaska and Seattle that doesn’t seem inhabited. But the reservations for rooms in my house are pouring in and that means the visitors can’t be far behind.

Usually by this time of the year I have forgotten the down side of summer visitors enough to actually look forward to their coming. After a long, dark and cold winter, visitors are, like the birds that flock north this time of the year, a visible symbol of the return of light and heat.  On the other hand, with the first requests for reservations, I find myself glancing around at my house and wondering how I could have possibly lived here through the entire winter without noticing how drab and ugly it had gotten.

Last year when this mood hit I found myself hauling thousands of dollars worth of plastic containers home in the hope of bringing order to my closets. Before the dust had completely settled, my birds were on the phone with their lawyers asking if I was required to put an air hole in the box if I tried to house them in one.

The thing is, I didn’t really get rid of stuff when I went through this exercise.  I just rearranged all the junk that was in the closets.  I found out that if you put all the junk in plastic containers, there is infinitely more room in what had once seemed a crowded space for yet more junk.  My closets how have plastic containers surrounded by miscellaneous items that have migrated to them through the winter. For some reason I have trouble throwing this stuff out even though I don’t actually want it visible in my house.

Now, to my great consternation, I find out that the first visitors to request accommodations are my sister and two of her dear friends, one of whom, Michael, is a master contractor who works miracles in wood and has renovated her home into something usually only seen in Architectural Digest or some such upscale publication. Like my sister, Michael has a problem with what they both consider unnatural materials.  These materials are, unfortunately, what my house is mostly composed of.  And so I look at my fake wood and fake slate flooring and wonder if he will have an asthma attack while breathing in the fumes – fumes which my animals and I now consider necessary for normal breathing.

I notice that the railing on my staircase is worn, the paint totally gone in spots.  I realize that my ceiling is two different whites in some places, testament to renovations done at differing times.  I look at the floor in the master bathroom and wonder how I could have ever thought it was nice. And need I even get into the parts of the molding that my birds have chewed up and spit out just for amusement?

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I do not have the time or money needed to rip my house out down to the frame and start all over again before he gets here. What I do have money for, though, is more plastic containers.  And while I realize that they are no more natural than my flooring, I figure if I buy enough of them and use them creatively enough in the few closets left in my house not already overwhelmed with them, maybe he won’t notice where Abdul chewed up the woodwork and furniture.

What I’m aiming to do is so dumbfound him with the creative uses to which I will put these containers that he will be blinded to all else. It’s either that or I need someone living on Hillside in a very expensive home to volunteer to trade with me for a week.  You have to be tolerant of parrots that think all wood was put there for them to chew and a very old dog that can’t always tell the difference between green lawn and green carpet. 

But in return you’ll get to live in a house that is made of indestructible materials that cannot be damaged in any way that a soapy sponge can’t fix.  And since that basically describes my philosophy in life, dress and friends, I guess we’ll all just have to accept the duck taped chair for what it is…an original piece of Alaskana.