Red Scare

When one is a middle aged homogay, there are times when the decorating sickness falls on one. There is nothing to be done, one must resign oneself to swatches. So let me tell you about my own particular Designing Women madness.

R Man and I had longed planned curtains for our poppy yellow dining room. He was holding out for hot pink and white stripes. Considering his very staid disposition, his occasional fondness for clown college style decor was always surprising when it reared its bizarre little head. I was actually all for it, but R's all-too untimely demise sort of derailed the project.

Since he died, I had periodically and with no great enthusiasm, hunted for fabric for the curtains. No dice. All I could ever find was excessively tasteful stripes and insipid flowers. One store where I described the chintz of my dreams, with monkeys and palm trees in pink and orange all but pushed me out the door.

Finally, though, I accidentally ran across a beautiful chinese style embroidered fake silk, with gold dragons and red thorn trees on a scarlet background.

I had our curtain lady (the amusingly appropriate Mrs. Draper. I'm not making that up) run them up, with a matching pair for the flanking windows in solid crimson silk.

Once that train had left the station, I found myself on a red roll. A coppery red mirror to offset the charming plum branches hand painted for us by the immensely talented Super Agent Fred.

A tiny tangerine glass vase.

And a beautiful oxblood lamp.

Lastly, at the store where I snagged the lamp and the vase, an enormous asian armoire in red lacquer waylaid me. I certainly did not need it. We had a perfectly good china cabinet that matched the rest of the mahogany furniture in the room. But you know, I never really liked that stupid hutch, and the armoire was on sale and it was red and all of a sudden I saw my hand passing over my credit card. The next thing I knew....

before

after

Saki scopes out the defensive possibilities of the new cabinet.

It's not my fault. It's The Sickness.