The Things Around Me

I remember looking around at older women at my first few jobs (and back then, "older" meant "above 30" and wondering why they got so bedazzled for work.

I also remember doing some work with a high-end useless pretty things shop in Kansas City. I was in the shop when a woman came in and ordered hundreds of dollars in soon-to-die centerpieces, and my twentysomething self threw up in her mouth. Of course, at the time, I lived in a first-floor one-bedroom that butted up to an abandoned building/crackhouse, so seasonal color was sort of lost on me.

My daughter has been making fun of me lately because of my obsession with my pumpkin cairn. At the patch, I bought 89 pounds of unusual, low, flat and red, green and orange pumpkins, and I stacked them outside my door. My husband thought I'd gone Pinterest. My daughter thought I needed to get over myself. I was starting to grok the value of seasonal color. Once you get to paint your own walls whatever color you want, pumpkins get to be interesting little fuckers.

It has been a slow change. I now understand why I'd want to iron clothes on a weekday, even though I work from home. And I understand when you get older -- and in my case, are tied at home a lot by a child -- the need for home to be more interesting grows. When I was twentysomething, I was hardly ever home. Now the money I used to spend on cabs and cover goes to cat litter and CVS. That pumpkin cairn greets me every time I drive up.

I get those little old ladies now buying flower arrangements for their foyer tables.