This is corny. It's candy corn-y.
Lessons from Home Reno Edgy Coastal Grandma Queens
Hello on this Sunday evening. It’s raining and spooky here.
I am continuing on with the subscription donation project. For October, the organization is the Museum of Chinese in America. If you are new here (welcome!) or need a refresher, you can always find more details of the project on my About page. Also, if you want to be a matching donor, let me know.
I have also decided to extend the paid subscription discount offer! Paid subscriptions are 10% off for the whole next year as a celebration for NYC Decade-aversary. If you want to upgrade, now is a great time.
This newsletter means a lot to me. If you are connecting with the work at all, please consider clicking the heart button and/or leaving a comment and/or sharing it. I am not on social media currently which effects the ease at which I can share this newsletter. So, if you decide to share, you will make my Halloween so spooktacular!
It’s corny. It’s so corny, y’all. And not even candy corn-y. GET IT?! … Yes, I did already tell this joke in the title of this post but it’s nearly Halloween so I figured I needed to have some sort of spooktacular related joke, even if it’s the same one. Twice.
Uhhhh, where was I?
Oh yeah. This thing. That is corny.
It has been noted, many times before, how my default comfort television tends to be food shows and/or home renovation and diy shows. And as one of the only people…probably on the planet…who pays for Discovery+, I have a never ending supply of cookies and mod-podge at my disposal. A blessing and a curse, really. Will I ever watch any of the many new shows or movies that are on my long long list? Well, I’ll give you a hint. I went to see The Nightmare Before Christmas in a literal movie theatre this week. That movie is THIRTY. YEARS. OLD.
Unable to decide which of my standard spooky movies to jump into, I spent almost the whole of last weekend watching home renovation shows. I made it through multiple seasons of a couple I’ve never seen before including Capturing Home.
The thing about home renovation shows, particularly ones that are Magnolia Network based, is the formula is always the same. This is true of food shows, reality tv, sitcoms…lots of things. For home renovation shows, it seems to be this:
At least one host, probably two
If there are two hosts, they have been partners for a long time and/or are married or related
If the hosts are not married to each other, they are almost always still married or partnered and part of the show is seeing them interact with their partners at home
If there are kids, you will probably see the kids and the hosts will say, “when you have kids…” at least once an episode
There has to be some kind of gimmick—no demo renovations, a certain budget, a specific way a designer will approach something, etc.
Capturing Home is no exception to this formula. It centers around Kate Martindale and Amy Neunsigner, two LA-based middle-aged women who have been business partners for a long time. They are both designers but Kate is also a prop stylist and Amy is also a lifestyle photographer. Photography, in general, is the gimmick here. They take pictures before they design, they make mood boards and take pictures of those, and then, of course, they take gorgeous home magazine-style photos when the design is finished. You know, the sort of photos where you are sure no one has actually lived in the space yet. It is too pristine.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t find them incredibly charming. They have a lovely partnership and seem to be great foils for each other. They listen well and work with their clients well. Both of them have a style that I aspire to. It’s like Coastal Grandmother with a hard edge. It’s comfy, a bit oversized, lived in, with more masculine silhouettes that still seem to be put together and professional. Honestly, I think I watched the whole thing just to keep getting outfit ideas.
Formulas. The thing about a formula for a home renovation show is that it works. It partially works because there is one more element that is clear in every show—the very distilled design philosophy that is often recited both in the opening and at least once per episode. For Kate and Amy, it’s: the little things are the big things.
The little things are the big things.
It’s so corny. It’s so cliché. And, right now, I find myself thinking about it all the time.
I didn’t realize it had seeped into my brain so much until I was talking with a good friend earlier this week. She’s working through things like personal exploration and boundary setting, something that most of us have/are/will be working through at some point in our lives. During our conversation, I reminded her that it’s not like something big happens overnight. It’s a lot of little things that build up over time. Then I literally said:
You know how most of us have a whole lot of advice to give but often don’t take that advice ourselves? *Raises hand.* Guilty. Advice is almost always falling out of my face whether I mean for it to or not and whether the person I am talking to wants it or not. Call me a good listener with a penchant to be able to distill what I am hearing into a memorable quip. Call it a character flaw. Or call me a human dictionary of corny and clichéd phrases. Call me all three (and probably some other things too).
When I relayed this home reno show tagline to my friend, I realized that I needed to hear it. That it had stuck in my brain because I actually needed to hear it.
From what I can tell, 2023 has not been very kind to anyone. Particularly recently, it is continuously overwhelming and sad on the whole. Personally, my 2023 has been…bad. I don’t think there is any sugar-coating it at this point. It feels silly to be saying that in the greater context and it is also something that’s true. And something that, I’m guessing, has become more and more clear through the arc of the newsletters since, at least, February. There are usually ups and downs, of course. That’s how life works. But, I know when I can’t even access a little chuckle deep down inside, as I noted last week, I’m in a mostly down slump.
For most of my life, I have not really been a mantra sort of person. It felt a little bit silly to me. As a writer, I always figured there was a more elegant way to get to something besides a mantra. At the expense of simplicity, I have previously favored existential complexity. I thought it was the right outlet for my moodiness. Subconsciously, I probably thought it made me a more mysterious and interesting person. It is also something theatre people, artists, and writers are taught in school and then, usually by the culture, is paramount to creation. “Existential complexity” is “tortured” by another name. Tortured artists don’t have mantras. It is too basic.
What a load of shit.
It’s a good thing I like to learn because I’ve had to do a lot of it over the years. The moodiness I assumed was core to my artistic soul is actually clinical depression. And the existential complexity that I lived in actually meant that I built an excessive amount of walls around myself. Let’s be real, I continue to be an existential type of person. But I have learned the difference between using that to build walls with no doors and letting it be a door in the wall. Somewhere I can visit, not something that locks me away. Well, it’s something I continue to learn. (Thanks, therapy!) I’m always learning.
Part of the way that I have learned that is to value simplicity, to lean into those lessons that feel the most basic, and to catalog all the corny phrases that reverberate in my brain.
Mantras, catchphrases, affirmations are some things that do work. Which is annoying. They don’t necessarily work all the time or for every person in the same way and yet, there is a reason why a lot of people try them at some point in their lives. Sometimes you need a simple phrase to recite to yourself over and over, to take your brain from “No” to “Okay, I guess maybe” to “Yeah. Yes. That makes sense.” Sometimes you need a simple phrase to acknowledge that things are not okay now and it’s okay to give it some time. Sometimes you need a simple phrase to remember who you are.
The little things are the big things. That’s the simple phrase I am holding so tightly to at the moment.
One of my favorite things to do is also one of my worst habits. List-making. Most days, it’s a joyful habit. Something that keeps me organized and scratches the itch for making little doodles and noticing the smallest details. In times when things are hard, when the depression is loudly making itself known, it is a habit that buys me a one-way ticket down the spiral. One or two rough things and I’m okay. When I hit three, it’s a list.
A long list of bad things in my life is like weights in my coat pockets. Any single event or emotion or rejection is so overwhelmingly huge I don’t know how to see around it. And yet, when I look closely, these things are not actually huge. When I root around in my pockets, the weights aren’t one solid mass. The weights are made up of lots of small pebbles that become very heavy.
Lately, that is something that I have honestly not been able to remember. Until this silly little phrase.
Because, when I am feeling on the edge, it’s not the big things that drag me there. It is the small things. It is realizing that I have to make a phone call I don’t want to. It is having to spend a bunch of time researching one little thing so it doesn’t have a ripple effect. It is the store being out of an ingredient I need. Or tripping over my shoelace. Or getting my pocket caught on the door knob. Why do you always get your pocket caught on a doorknob when you’re already having a bad day?!
It is also not the big things that pull me back from the edge. It is the small things. It’s finding silly new home reno shows to get lost in. It’s
reminding me to find a little joy. (Everyone and their mother is sharing this post these days and rightfully so, I say.) It’s a movie theatre all to myself. It’s picking up a little treat. It’s burning candles in skull candlestick holders I made myself. It’s a phone call. It’s a surprise venmo. It’s getting to see a few people I haven’t seen in years while surrounded by art and laughter.Little things do add up to big things, on both ends of the spectrum. These days, I’m just trying to remember to take some of those heavier pebbles out of my pockets. The good ones weigh a little less.
Which is exactly why I’m going to go order some Mexican food and try and figure out what spooky movie the bestie and I are going to watch cross-country this evening.
This week, paying subscribers learned about two minor, but funny, f*ck ups from the last week. If that sounds intriguing to you, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Remember, for the whole month of August, paid subscriptions are 10% off.