But… but…

While surfing the net, I stumbled upon a popular television station looking for America’s worst spaces. This summer, they are filming a design competition and are looking for bad bedrooms, kitchens, backyards, etc.

So… I was thinking…

Why not submit mine?!?

I made two submissions: one for our backyard and another for our kitchen.

The questionnaires required photo submissions so I went home to snap my awful, awful backyard and kitchen.

Unfortunately, we’ve had a lot of rain lately and my previously hideous dirt patch backyard has suddenly sprouted a ton of green weeds. Even more unfortunate, in photos, the weeds look like a lush green lawn.

It’s kinda difficult to say you have the worst backyard in America when it looks like this:

Stupid rain.

I should have put and asterisk on the bottom that said: *Objects in photo are uglier than they appear.

Then, I moved to the kitchen thinking, ‘I’ve got this in the bag!’

Come on, my cabinets are spray painted, my countertop has stains, my oven is only big enough for a Cornish game hen…

And then…

It’s not my fault that my Judy Dench kitchen photographs like Cindi Crawford.

* Please note, I did not say Giselle Bundchen because, like Cindy Crawford, the kitchen is a little older but you can still tell it was really pretty in its younger days.


I considered contacting the DMV to ask what kind of cameras they use but then I decided…

The backyard, despite the weed infestation, has a great view of the city. In the summer, it’s easy to overlook the ugliness of the yard to see the beauty of the valley.

My kitchen is actually kinda cute. Sure, the pilot on the stove clicks for 50 years before lighting and the whole time all I think is, ‘PROTECT YOUR FACE IN CASE OF FIRE!’, sure the fork drawer requires two hands to open, and maybe wine spills on the countertop require a triage of bleach but…

We OWN this house. We OWN it. We get to make our own memories here. And one day, after they tattoo my burned eyebrows back on, I’ll look at the stains on the counter and remember the fun times we had putting them there.

And I realized shouldn’t complain.




… but of course, I submitted the photos anyway.

Just in case.