bunch of unrelated home things

1.) I have this bush/shrub/whatever in front of my bay (?) window that, despite total neglect and my ability to kill any and all plant life that I go near, grows like crazy. Even though I cut the hell out of it in spring 2007, it as of yesterday was overtaking my front window again. So last evening I got out my badass electric hedge trimmer and trimmed. Not so dramatically, but enough to ensure the whole window is visible. I mention this only because, as you people know, using power tools that I only have a vague knowledge of how to work is so satisfying and enjoyable to me, it might as well be sexual.

2.) A woman on Rate My Space posted her "$25,000 budget kitchen redo" which leads one to think, "oh fuck you." The comments she got, while perhaps not so blunt, boiled down to: 25k is not budget for most people, bitch, and for 25k, you only got refaced/repainted cabinets, not new ones? I think you got hosed. I'm kind of wondering whether this is the case of someone who is so out-of-touch that she doesn't realize $25,000 is a lot of money *or* that she just wants people to think she thinks $25,000 isn't a lot of money. Frankly, both options are unappealing and don't reflect well, y'know? I'm thinking I could do everything I wanted to do over in my kitchen for $4500, especially if I painted the cabinets myself, which is a shitload of work, but which I am not afraid to do. And I could probably do it for even less, if I was capable of putting in a new floor myself, which I *am* afraid of.

3.) Which leads me to some questions. What do *you* think is the optimal flooring for a kitchen? I know everyone is putting in hardwood or fake laminate wood these days, but I think that's kinda stupid. I'm not gonna have flooring in my kitchen that I'm worried about getting wet. Plus, since there is hardwood in the adjoining dining/living room, it would be obvious that it didn't match. So then there's tile, which can be beautiful and is easier to take care of, but which is cold on the bare feet and *hard* when you stand on it awhile and therefore not so back-friendly. Which isn't a problem in the bathroom, since I don't spend so much time standing in there, and I do have bathroom rugs (which I know people think are gross, but too bad). But I *do* cook quite a bit, even if against my will, so I stand in the kitchen a lot. In my white trash heart, I want to say, why? why can I not just get really nice vinyl flooring? it's cheap, you can get it wet, and it's comfy on the bare feet and back.

4.) Segueing from that, I hate granite. I will not get granite countertops. I don't think most of it is that pretty and I resent that it's what you're "supposed" to have, whether you like it or not. In fact, I think it's trendy and in ten or fifteen years all these people who had to have it in their kitchens are going to be trying to sell their houses to other people who sniff and go, "did you see the granite in there? it's so mid-2000's!" My ideal countertops would be butcher block. I love the way wood looks on counters. Warm and nice. I also know this makes no sense for someone who *just said* she doesn't want wood floors in her kitchen because of the water question. But, in fact, over my (nonfunctional antique) dishwasher, there's a piece of butcher block instead of counter, right next to the sink, original to the house, and though the finish is off it in a certain spot where my dad insists on leaving certain damp things and thus the wood is soft in that spot and I actually sanded the fuck out of it last Sunday, *other than that* I think it held up pretty well for a quarter century of use and abuse and I don't see how butcher block counter tops wouldn't be any different, especially if you didn't abuse them.

5.) Lastly, what's up with all these people who don't have beds or at least headboards, just a bedframe with a box spring/mattress on it? Headboards are not that expensive, as furniture goes. If you can afford the fucking flatscreen in your bedroom, you can afford to actually have a bed that looks like a bed. Or am I totally out of touch with the kids these days and this is just like when my ex-inlaws used to make snide remarks about my lack of drapes when I was 22?

xoxo