Truth in advertising

Right now, for the next five minutes, this is the sweetest spot in my house. While it's true that I always have a bowl of beautiful California grown "organic" lemons in a pretty bowl sitting out in my dining room*, I don't want you to feel that you too should have an inviting bowl of citrus displayed in a playful bowl at all times. Who needs the pressure? I don't know why Romantic Homes has not yet approached me to do a spread on my "quirky" decorating style when it's clear to everyone who enters my home that it is a place where creativity and magic abound.

A place, in fact, where romance truly thrives** I have offered this sunny little corner for your viewing pleasure because I know that what you really want is a little taste of what it's like to be psychotic a deliciously wacky person, like me. Which is why I'd like to point out that this beautiful case, on which my sunlit lemons sit, houses my semi-professional accordion which will not be practiced on again until I've forgotten every song I know how to play on it. The case isn't dusty, as you may have been secretly thinking to yourself, it's actually just a "patina" of age***. I like everything in my house to be weathered, because this shows what a person of character I am.

It's important to me that you are impressed with my character.

But not so much that you are intimidated. Because I am just like you. Except that you don't have my bowl of lemons.

Because I know how tortured you feel sometimes when looking at homes filled with gorgeous tableaus (like mine), I offer up the wide angle view. Do you see my lemons back there? Most of the time I like to sit right next to my lemons. Because that's the only place in my house that really sends my creative muse into hyper space a delicate meditation of my art.

I am here to reassure you that if you would like to spend your life sitting next to a bowl of lemons which are resting on a dead boy's custom made accordion, encouraging your muse to ramble through the meadows of your gentle mind, please don't stop on my account!

I like to let flowers reach a pinnacle of decay in order that I can deeply appreciate the full cycle of life. I am a contemplative quiet person**** who likes to read mushroomy poems about nature and I find that watching the algae grow around the rotting stems of my two week old dead daffodils brings me as close to the voice of the universe as I can get. Although my family does sometimes express concern over my zen-like qualities, they are often moved to leave me to my quiet contemplations.

Here's a little housekeeping tip for you (it's copy righted, so don't express this tip as your own in a professional capacity please!): When your family has grown impatient with life's evidence of decay (as in a vase of dead flowers that have developed an odor), simply move the evidence. They will be so relieved that it isn't where they expected it that they will be too stunned to comment when they find it somewhere new.

Let us come back to the lemons. There is a feast of textural riches to be explored here. Why spend time anywhere else in your house when you can behold these beautiful fruits that have the added bonus of preventing an unexpected epidemic of scurvy?

Now, I want to share a few other random things with you, my oh so patient (and obviously gentle) readers:

• I constantly have imaginary conversations in my head with people I know, and sometimes with people I've never even met but imagine I may, at some point meet. (I also compose a lot of letters in my head, of the hand written variety). Today as I was cycling home I was having a conversation in my head in which I (puzzlingly) declared "If I was a man, I'd totally be a lesbian!" If you can figure that one out I will give you a million dollars, just as soon as I earn my second million.

• If you are going to become a close friend of mine, it is inevitable that at some point I will feel the need to let you know that Philip and I are not swingers. I don't judge the swinging life*****, I just think it's important that a potential friend is aware that at no point in our friendship will I make a pass at them, or accept a pass either.