Living room shot

Here you can see why I'd rather be in the kitchen than in the living room. Not much fun in there. In 2001 when this picture was taken, Mommy had just redecorated the room. That green couch used to be a dark brown fabric that pilled all the time. And it used to be in the rec room downstairs. I remember watching TV as a teenager picking the pills off the couch. I could end up with a huge ball of fuzz and there would still be a million pills left. The floral chair used to be dark orange and is the chair where her father sat and read at night and where my father sat and read at night. It's always referred to as Daddy's chair. Oh - and the green mantelpiece is now the same cream as the rest of the room and looks much better.

Those gold curtains are the subject of much controversy this year. Our old cats loved sitting in the window - nice, wide surface where they could see everything + curtains to shred to pieces. Talk about cat heaven. But now the only cat left is Alice and she leaves the curtains alone so Mommy finally can replace the curtains without it being a waste of money. Took her forever to find ones she liked. Finally did, ordered them and thought they'd come in just in time to hang before Thanksgiving. Something happened (she told me but I wasn't really listening) and now they're coming in a week too late.

This is all very upsetting because Cousin has a gorgeous home just outside of Baltimore and we always feel like the poor relations next to him. Plus it doesn't help that we think he thinks of us as the poor relations. So now there are cat-shredded 30 year old curtains in her beautiful living room, worn wood floors and the floor tiles in the downstairs bathroom are half removed and haven't been replaced because Mommy can't figure out what color tile to put in. All are perfectly acceptable and there are good reasons for all - but Cousin doesn't come over every day so doesn't know the full story. Oh well. Not like having new curtains would make us feel less like the poor relations.