
Even eight inch celery stalks shooting out of her salad can’t distract Shirley from making googly eyes at Donald. William, however, seems to be admiring the luster of his Cheviot tweed.
You guys, I don’t usually share images as recent as only 30-something years old, which I’m guessing this is, but we need to talk about this.

Discounting the obvious crimes of hair and use of cigarettes (and LENGTH of cigarettes; you’ve come a long, long, LONG way, baby), and plaid vest that somehow makes her more street than lumberjack, or even simply the use of THIS as their Christmas card, what bothers me most is those blinds. I remember those blinds in my first years of apartment dwelling. The way they never moved in synchronicity like Venetian blinds or their superior window cousin, plantation shutters. Just try and pull them to the side. You can already hear the swishing and slamming of cheap plastic blind crashing into cheap plastic blind. Erratic! Random!
And oh, what fun to dust them! And even better, what their very existence oft implied, which was sliding glass doors. Who doesn’t love the sliding glass door? You know, the one that only slides seamlessly for a month before catching and stuttering. Or it does that diagonal thing, where it gets off its rollers. Yes, the very same sliding glass door that a criminal attempted to break into in my townhome in the early 90s, when everyone used that same broken broom handle to shove in between the doors as a perfect deterrent. It was only good fortune that my angry queen of a roommate drew said blinds back and showed his horrified face to the thief that saved us. Damn sliding door. Damn blinds. What did they think they would get? A glass coffee table full of Madonna magazines and a TV with an enormous antenna? Hmph.

I saw this today and couldn’t help but share.
Tired of walking past those round wooden spindles pre-turn of this century? Ashamed to have guests notice that yellow brown color that dates your abode? I wouldn’t even want to visit a home with this shade of devil’s stain. Why, it’s the shade of nicotine teeth.

Sure, you could replace them with wrought iron balusters, but isn’t that trite? What you need is to get yourself a big honking coconut tree, get your best stabbing knife, and knotch it up at intervals as make-shift steps!

So rustic! So tropical! Won’t your friends be jealous? Test their agility by testing whether rails were even necessary to make it upstairs or just holding them back. Granted, your own kids may miss bumping down a carpeted stairway in a laundry basket, or being able to carry anything at all, instead of having to carefully clutch the sides of a rough trunk to escape the monsoon. But practice makes perfect! And ladies, no more short skirts. Not on this coconut tree!
Worried you won’t be able to deck them out with Christmas festivity, as in days of yore?

Nonsense! Wrap that sucker up with some classic white LED lights. Just make sure not to step on them as you climb. Ouch!

Now that’s what I call sustainable living!