Bourgeois

Don't worry, I'm not going to become one of those cutesy Etsy aesthetic home decor bloggers that always baffle me with the amount of free time (and money in the case of the Brooklyn ones with bespoke, hand-screened wallpaper the price of gold. I do want to buy the shit out of some cool wallpaper, though. And want to do a full-wall photo mural. The homespun Mormon genre is also weird for obvious reasons) it must take to source and fuss over the perfect fruit bowl or vintage telephone (I watch a lot of TV, it would cut into my sedentary time) but I may start talking about my new place and neighborhood from time to time, well, because it's new. I don't take pretty picutres, though, and hate staging still-lifes.

Also, I'm convinced all these lifestyle bloggers will be divorced within the next two years; it's what happens when you showcase so much sweetness to the world. What goes on behind closed, unblogged doors is dark.

I've been stymied lately by a lack of concentration, which
is not helped by physical clutter. I can't focus in messy environments and I'm
currently living in chaos and out of boxes. I have a horrible time writing when
things aren't in order or are unfamiliar (I'll never get people with laptops in
cafes or on planes; I find it hard to even read while flying) or even with music playing (everyone today [it took me two days to finally post this, hence the publish date not jibing] has been
blogging and tweeting about 25th anniversaries of like all music in the world,
which on one level is distressing because we're closer to death, obviously, but
then because I felt compelled to put on Strangeways Here We Come
and had to stop and listen for the next 36 minutes–thankfully, it's a short
album–because I can't write with music playing. It's extremely distracting to
me, and then I started thinking about all those weird pop-soul-ish British
bands of the era, one-hit-wonders here, like Curiosity Killed the Cat [you can
see the recently deceased Acme restaurant in the background] Blow Monkeys, Hipsway, which
pushed me into alterna-adult stuff like Double and Blue Nile. Then I start looking for current photos of all these bands to see how they turned out in [real] middle age. Shit, now I'm being sucked into Chapterhouse. Um, is this what Adderall helps with?).

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One-week in and this is what the living room looks like.

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I'm thrilled to have a grown-up kitchen now that I'm grown
up, but trauma lies behind those non-particle board cabinets.Even though the former apartment was equally
large, we treated the downstairs like a dumping ground for rarely used pantry
items and now there's no place for my 2005 Thanksgiving-themed Jones Sodas,
decade-old purple Heinz ketchups, never used dried herbs and Chinese spices. Every
nook and cranny in the kitchen is filled and there are still unopened boxes of
foodstuffs with nowhere to go (never mind the multiple shelves of cleaning
products that are now homeless too). That was all my own doing, though, so I'm
tolerant.

It's the sea salt problem, i.e. gifts from Marshalls, that's
turned me into an unasked for hoarder. I resent the volume of things I never
bought or asked for that can't be tossed out. I did throw a bunch in a garbage
bag that ripped and James spazzed and rescued some ancient cheddar biscuit mix,
steak seasoning, seafood seasoning, green peppercorns and beef bouillon.

I'm waiting for him to notice that I've purged over 50 (yes,
50) pieces of cutlery (we still have a full drawer). At least the soft-shutting
drawers soothe a bit.

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There are approximately eight balsamic vinegars in the back corner. One bottle would last me ten years. That's Amish popcorn butter in the foreground, by the way.

 

At least ten boxes of  imported pastas lurk in this cabinet. I don't eat pasta (though I do enjoy Asian noodles).

I won't even get into the jams, also not eaten by anyone in the household. I just chop fruit into my yogurt.

Is there anything more bourgie than balsamic vinegar, sea salt and unusually shaped pastas? Two pounds of sun-dried tomatoes, perhaps. I suppose one could characterize the intentionally purchased Rancho Gordo heirloom beans similarly.

There is a hair salon named Burz Wah on the next block where
I now catch a bus in the morning.

Bourgeois makes me think of Bourgeois Tagg, yet another mildly alterna-adult one-hit wonder.