I’ve been talking to my mother on the phone a lot lately. It’s Christmas, after all, and she doesn’t want to get on a plane and travel to the far reaches of North America, which is how she thinks of Connecticut. So instead, we’re talking on the phone enough to make us feel as though she’s taken the trip here. 

The only possible advantages to this are that I don’t have to fight with her about smoking in the house, and also nobody has to fight the traffic at the airport.

Otherwise, it’s exactly the same.

Naturally, we cover a lot of subjects in these calls. But last night we got to her theory of decorating a house, and, because by that time, I had been talking to her on the phone for enough hours to turn my brain to goo, I started typing what she was saying–just so I could keep myself from slipping into a coma.

Here, then, just in time for Christmas, is my mother’s verbatim advice for those in need of some decorating tips:

I used to have an old rusty refrigerator, and one day I couldn’t stand looking at that anymore, so I just got up and went to the store and bought me some finger paints. And I came home and finger-painted that refrigerator! All you’ve got to do is just mush it on. It looked absolutely gorgeous so I did the cabinet doors and I did the bookcase that was serving as a pantry. I still have that and it still looks great. One day a man came to deliver something, and he said, “That refrigerator looks just like somebody finger-painted it!” In fact, I made so many improvements to the place that the landlady started charging me $50 more a month for rent. (wild, cackling laugh) No, that’s not it. She said she hated it and that she was going to have to get rid of it and buy a new refrigerator. So I said to her, give it to me if you’re going to just throw it out. “

 

Today I bought a rug from a man and it turned out to be orange. Orange! What am I going to do with that, in my lavender and aqua living room? I guess I’ll have to finger paint it. Now what color do you think will cover up the orange? Do you think yellow will work? Maybe black. It’s a beautiful Oriental wool carpet, but it just doesn’t go. So I’m going to finger-paint it black. I think black carpeting looks cool, don’t you? “