Enthusiasm

Today is my husband’s birthday and having worked  a full day followed by an evening out with the family, my post will be brief this time around. Being used to tight deadlines it is not the timeframe that poses a problem, but the annoying limit this puts on the subjects available for debating. There are few things under the sun that merit a rushed and limited discussion as everything is multifaceted, few if any occurrences or developments be justly described by a hurried narration.

But....there are exceptions to this lofty view of life. When trying to think of something so boring that I will never want to write about it ever, and by writing hurriedly about it now I will not be ruining a topic for a future blog, one subject immediately jumped to mind. It is certain not to to conjure up Thalia at a later date, as no matter how hard I try, as I am unable to rustle up a milligram of enthusiasm regarding: Kitchens.

Now this is pretty unfortunate as an interest in these rooms would truly help me face the choices my husband and I now stand before concerning kitchen appliances and cabinets needing to be decided on in relation to the renovation of our house. When the subject is raised a fog sets in, within my skull, and the lists and brochures showing the various contraptions that are shoved in front of me by overly cheery salesmen appear as if in soft focus, seeming equally interesting a read as a blank page. I really, truly don’t care if my oven is pyrolitic or not, or if the eggs we boil become hot from gas, induction or electric burners – the colour of which is the topic for a second, just as annoying, decision layer. Much less does the dilemma regarding a built in espresso machine or one standing on the counter, keep me up at night. At present we get good coffee at work and use instant coffee at home, accomplished by boiling water in an electric kettle that would make the salesmen cringe. Out of respect for them we have never mentioned its existence.

Our architect is another key player in this renovation project which involves the whole house plus the yard, all requiring emergency treatment. She is great and appears to have limitless patience and manages to keep her cool while we constantly change our minds about the few things we have managed to have an opinion on. Although not many in number, the decisions already made are the easy fun ones, the ones involving for example a camera on a metallic snake making videos of the insides of our plumbing, the ones involving a yes or no answer. Do you want us to get the plumber/director to bring to life the secret hidden passageways leading from your toilets? Hell yes. Will you spend an evening watching the footage in case we missed something? Hell no. Easy as pie and if all decisions were like these then bring them on - my solmen oath to provide a reply a second. 

Despite a sunny nature the architect did become a bit frustrated at the kitchen disinterest and tried to focus our minds by giving us homework following a debriefing of the drawing status. “Go home and have a think about what kitchen appliances you really use as it is best to focus on choosing them with care and spending money on them instead of dividing the budget between all sorts of things you will not use.” Not looking forward to mulling over this we were nicely surprised when it only took us a few minutes to allocate our priorities. It turned out that the most used gadget in our kitchen is the phone, used to order take away. This lead us to a breakthrough in the kitchen dilemma, as having realised this we formulated a yes/no question that could possibly make the decision making process involved so much easier, namely: Do we really need a kitchen at all? The answer was quick in coming: Not really, a phone and a socket for the kettle will do nicely.

At the following meeting with our architect, our new idea, i.e. not to have a kitchen at all, was met with a very big frown. A “meet you halfway” solution to put in a coffee room instead did little to increase the glee. We were faced with the architect throwing in the towel or agreeing to follow contemporary living arrangements. So, having given in and settled on keeping the damned room, we have until Monday to decide on its contents. The weekend is thus looking grim. Who knows, maybe we will become so carried away we’ll even end up watching the plumbing DVD.

Yrsa - Wednesday