Whenever people live together in family groups you have certain routines that just seem to evolve and become what my son likes to call “a thing.” Like the fact that I usually pick him up from school and while he ravages the refrigerator we sometimes talk about his day. Except that this winter I added a shared cup of tea and it suddenly became “a thing.” In my opinion, these are the joy nuggets of family life and they are as special as every family is different.

This is the story of how my rotten cats thoroughly destroyed my VERY expensive designer sofa by using the corner as a scratching post. It happened subtly, over time, so at first I wasn’t even sure what was happening, maybe a pull here and there. Before I knew it it had crossed an invisible line and landed in the world of furniture too-far-gone in spite of the proliferation of hideously ugly cat-scratching paraphernalia that I tolerate all over my house. My two monsters just laughed as they exercised their complete right to do whatever they pleased – because that’s what cats do.

First, a little history on my house. It was built in 1920, there are NO right angles anywhere, and it was a rental for many years so even though we've lived here for 13 years we are still uncovering new ways in which the previous owners used duct tape to "fix" things. I recently had the unpleasant experience of preparing to paint my bedroom and removed all of the hardware from our closet doors only to find that the hinges, knobs and locks that were used are nowhere near standard sizes and couldn't easily be replaced. Since I had already taken everything off, I had no choice but to tackle the extremely tedious job of stripping years and years of paint and crust off of every single piece and then pray that it would all fit when I put it back together.

I was born without a left brain. Don’t feel too bad because I’d like the think that my right brain makes up for it, but the fact is that it’s a cruel joke played on me by the universe. I have this incredible fascination with space and time and energy, and yet not one single brain cell of mine is remotely capable of the mathematical computations required to be the astrophysicist that I was OBVIOUSLY meant to be. That said, I am seriously addicted to any and all shows about space and the creation of the universe and I worship at the altar of National Geographic, the Discovery Channel and the supreme astro-geek Neal deGrasse Tyson. If there was a Space Channel, I might never leave the house.

Energy is one of my favorite things to talk about because without it, the world as we know it would not exist. And I promise you that this will be the first of many posts on the subject because it totally fascinates me and it plays a big part in what I do. You see, energy is all around us and it manifests in our lives, our houses, and our stuff. I'm sure you've gone into a space that just "felt" good (or bad) and didn't really know why, or you met someone that you just liked (or didn't) and didn't know why. Without getting too woo woo on you, I will tell you that being a house whisperer means that I pick up on these energy signals and I can instantly tell when a house has what I call - good juju.

In previous posts I have waxed poetic on some of the reasons why I truly love Craigslist. The cornucopia of fascinating stuff, the thrill you get when you stumble onto something great and cheap, the stealth mission of picking up your item and avoiding the perfectly normal looking serial killer. I must admit that as a relatively private person, I feel a peculiar thrill at the thought of being thrust head first into a social situation where the only thing you have in common from buyer to seller is that you want something that this random person has. It's like this giant baton relay race. Here, I don't want this anymore, you take it. And vice versa. Needless to say, the possibilities for human weirdness are endless. And while I wish I had some great dark stories to tell, the sad truth is that I have met some seriously NICE people on Craigslist.