House Peeping

One of my favorite things to do is to look at other people’s houses—either on HGTV, just visiting friends or peeking into neighbors’ houses while on a walk. Oh, and by the way, if I’ve never been to your house before, you BETTER give me a tour the first time I come to visit. There’s nothing worse than a tour-less house visit. When you come to my house, I give the best tours—closets, inside the washer/dryer, drawers…everything.

So you can imagine my delight when Cul de Sac Carrie and I paid $11 for the Parade of Homes tour a couple of weeks ago. After the first of five houses I said, “I would pay $11 just to see this house!” We took turns pretending who owned each house:

Elsa: Oh, Carrie. I love what you’ve done with the dining room.
CdSC: Thanks. I like having that formal bench on one side of the table; that way guests can just pass out there if they drink too much.

CdSC: Elsa, it’s cool how you have a TV in every room plus buckets of champagne (even in the closet)! It’s like all you do is watch TV and drink.
Elsa: Well, it IS a dream home.

Of course we got tons of ideas for our own dream homes on the Cul de Sac: Wine cellar? Check. Pool with a sloping entrance so you don’t get a torn up bathing suit when you sit on the side? Check. Stripper pole for dancing or to use as an alternative to stairs? Double check.

But there is one room I refuse to build into my dream home—the media room. I really don’t like media rooms. That’s not to say that when I attended Alicia’s friend Kate’s Oscar party in her media room that I didn’t have a good time. I like other people to have media rooms. I just don’t want one for myself.

“But Elsa, you LOVE TV! In fact, you said you hate it when people say they don’t have time for TV!”

Yes, omnipotent person, that’s true. But when I watch TV I hate to feel cut off from the outside world. I like to know that at any moment I could get up and do something else. Or if someone called I could talk to them. Or if I was hungry I could eat and not have to worry about getting crumbs in my stadium seating. Plus, can you really channel surf in a media room? It’s like too much of a commitment—like you have to sit in there and watch old movies like Giant. I would feel weird watching anything trite like Tuesday Night Book Club or the Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Gauntlet Part VI or anything on UPN.

So on the Parade of Homes tour, every house had a media room. But this one house actually had a BED in the media room. CdSC and I immediately put our hands on the bed, both breathed a sigh of relief and simultaneously said, “Not a water bed.” Talk about tacky. That would be the ultimate in media room madness. This coming from a girl who’s not opposed to stripper poles.