imagining

No pictures today.

Rather, I invite you to use your imagination. It's what I do when I can't seem to wait ANY LONGER for our new kitchen to be up & running .

I close my eyes and imagine an antique general store counter, re-vamped into a kitchen island. It will have a re-purposed slab of black slate on top. In its earlier life, this slate was a chalk-board in the old Madrid School. Teachers would write homework assignments upon it. Naughty students would copy "I will not bring my pet mouse to class and terrorize the girls with it" one hundred times. The writing would get messier and tipsier as the sentences progressed.

That's my imagination working overtime.

Take a deep breath and picture this: maple cabinetry with a butternut stain, custom made by our favorite cabinet-maker. He's our favorite because he's the only one we know. Plus, I like his wife a lot.

These amazing cabinets will be built in this simple style. But even better, they will actually OPEN and CLOSE, which is a trick my present cabinets have yet to master. Actually, some of the existing doors do open, but in a willy-nilly style; as in when ones' head is in the way because one is chopping walnuts and one is not anticipating a cabinet door which is redolent of a hamster cage swinging open and hitting one in the ear.

Just saying, is all. Not really complaining; just saying.

Back to imagining. How about this? A double-bowl corian sink that has a river view.....with a sprayer that doesn't have a tricky handle which sticks and then sprays the next unfortunate soul who turns the tap on. This happened numerous times until we figured out that the present sprayer was a tool of the devil. Or at least the tool of #1 Son who angelically does the dishes very late at night after everyone has gone to bed but then forgets that mom will fill the coffee pot with cold tap water the next morning when she is barely awake.

Hey, how about this? A countertop that is not made of two-inch tiles that need to be scrubbed when flour and then egg white and then powdered sugar is strewn upon it. A countertop that does not illicit unintentional outbursts of mirth from people who see it for the first time. (although, truth be told, a few friends with retro-taste have actually liked the Moroccan blue...and when one calls it "Moroccan blue", I almost like it.)

(Almost.)

I will go on imagining in this way, for therapy's sake. And when the new, extremely improved, sanity-saving, user-friendly, temper-tantrum -free, budget-blowing kitchen is DONE,

I will be forced to start imagining another project.