My Wife, The Decor Shark

My wife is passionate about decorating. What Home Depot does to me JoAnn's Fabrics, Hallmark, and Cherry's Consignment (a local antique and furniture shop) does to her. I can usually tell when she's been to one or more of these places during the day by the look she gets when she enters a room: Eyes darting about, then fixing on the latest decorating challenge that she hasn't quite tamed, lips pursed, wheels turning in her head. If she stands there long enough you can almost see smoke coming out of her ears.

Her anxiety over all these design pain-points builds and builds until it erupts in a huge frenzy of decorating activity. She hit such a trigger-point yesterday. We bought an armoire for our family room to better contain the kids' games and toys (from Cherry's, incidentally), and it was delivered yesterday morning. Kapow!

I came home from work expecting to see the new armoire. I even did a good job of noticing the new curtains (I've had some warning they were coming--she's been sewing on them for several weeks now). But as I continued through the house I began to notice other things: a birdhouse...a ceramic bunny...new windchimes on the front porch...a new window treatment variation on the window next to the door...ditto the window in our bedroom...hey, was that end table with a patchwork tablecloth there before?...new cooking pans...

It was like Martha Stewart had launched a commando mission on our house while I was away. (Coincidentally or not, her latest issue of Martha's design magazine arrived yesterday).

Now let me clarify one thing right away before I find the doors all locked when I get home. My wife is excellent about staying within budget. She consults me on large purchases. She is not a spendthrift. Which makes such broad changes all the more amazing. She's managing all of this on a fairly limited budget!

But even after all the work she put in yesterday she was not satisfied. She was like a "decor shark" the rest of the day, moving slowly and purposely through the house, scanning for her next targets with "that look" on her face. And then comes that dreaded phrase: "Honey, what would you think if..."

Now I don't consider myself the average, clueless guy when it comes to decorating. I do not think "Dogs Playing Poker" is fine art. I do not consider anything involving beverage logos and/or neon as haut decor. I am aware (and agree) that there is more than one shade of white. I agree that such decisions as complimentary colors and fabric textures matter. As I recall, it was even my idea how to complete the window treatments in the living room.

However, my threshold of "looks good, leave it" is lower than hers. I'm aware that most of the time she will change her mind two or three more times after I've declared something acceptable. As a result, I've become somewhat used to giving throw-away opinions. I don't want to get too sold on something, as it will likely go away.

It's not that she's capricious. She's just more invested in the process than I am. She's painfully aware that even though those curtains looked fine last week, we just changed the wall decoration next to it and now it doesn't work. Me? I saw the curtains last week when she put them up, and they looked good. Now I notice the new wall decoration and decide it looks good. I don't re-evaluate the whole picture unless there is a serious clash.

The older I get the more wisdom I see in "The Karate Kid." You home decor do yes: Okay. You home decor do no: Okay. You home decor do so-so: Squish like grape. I care enough to have an opinion on some things, and even some ideas. But much of the time my head is engaged elsewhere and I'm not prepared to switch over to appraising decorating ideas.

Ultimately the problem is mine. I love my wife, and I love what she's doing with our home. It does look really good. I do appreciate that she wants to involve me in it. It's not even a Mars-Venus thing. I just need to stop obsessing over how the last measure in the piece I'm composing still doesn't work right and pay attention.

This isn't just something she's doing because she's got nothing better to do. It's a labor of love. If it wasn't important to her she would have been satisfied long ago. This is her Bablyon 5, her Great American Novel she's always wanted to write, her music studio she'd like to have someday. It wouldn't hurt me to validate that now and then.

This is why I blog. It allows me to uncover my personal deficiencies and engage in psychotherapy before a live audience. I get to drag you through a long, meandering sequence of thoughts in order to arrive at something you probably already knew:

I am a dork.

It could be worse. You could have to pay for this!