Is This My Beautiful House?

I’ve written before about house angst, that longing for the perfect house. Who knew I had one? I mean, I love my house (now, after years of a love/hate relationship with it), but I was pretty surprised when someone from the Broad Ripple Historic Home Tour left a note on my door last spring asking if we’d consider opening our house for it. Then, when I didn’t respond, showed up on my doorstep and asked in person.

“Well,” I said. “I guess you can come in and look around to see if you’re really interested.”

They were. I thought it would be fun, so I said, “Yes.

I got two basic responses when I told people about this: “Oh, cool!” and “Are you crazy?”

As for the latter, last week, as the Home Tour loomed, I was beginning to think “crazy” might apply. Not because I was feeling worried about 800 or so people tromping through my house, invading my privacy or, worse, stealing my stuff, but because I actually found myself polishing the leaves of my plants. Seriously. It was the pinnacle of days and days of cleaning and sprucing things up, generally. Not to mention spending an awful lot of money on kitchen and bathroom counters, newly painted rooms, and landscaping improvements.)

“But when it all got going on Saturday morning, I had a blast.

"I love the yellow!" people said, coming in.







"And the blue kitchen!"










“Are you an artist?” one woman asked. “You are very daring with color.”

I think it was a compliment.






People lingered in my nutty little office, which looks alarmingly like the inside of my head.









“Whoa!” they said when they walked out into my nifty little garden.










I was exhausted when it was over. Today, I relished the rainy, gloomy day inside my still-sparkling house, with it bouquets of flowers bought at the Farmers Market for the occasion.