The best compliment I've ever gotten was from a bunch of 14 year old boys. It seems that my son and his friends were sitting around one day challenging each other to a game of "whose house would you want to live in if you couldn't live in your own?" Our house won.

I have been notably absent from my blog lately. Mostly because I’ve been very busy, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’ve also been wrestling with how to be relevant, and even respectful, when faced with the daily barrage of heavy-duty shit going on in the world right now.

When is the best time to buy furniture? The best advice I can give on buying furniture is to buy what you love and to start now because you’re already late. For most of us, our life in furniture starts with hand-me-downs and leftovers from our college days along with a splurge at IKEA for anything new. And this is fine in the beginning because the expectations are low and we’re just starting out so everything and anything feels like we’re legit playing house.

A conversation between my husband and I goes something like this: it’s not going to fit, yes it will, no it won’t it’s too big, don’t worry it’s perfect it’ll fit, I’m not going back if it doesn’t fit, I promise it will fit, I think you’re wrong on this one, you can stop talking now. And of course I’m always right because I have an extremely heightened sense of space and I innately know when something will fit. In fact, my aunt used to tell my mother that I was spatially gifted because as a baby I could do the shape sorter in record time. This was the same aunt who gave me a subscription to National Geographic every Christmas (which I hated) not knowing that one day I’d be a total galactic junkie. Obviously a very brilliant woman.

It’s very easy - just show him your underwear. First let me say that my plumber is honestly the NICEST guy ever put on God’s green earth. No joke. The truth is that if he actually charged people for everything he does, he’d have been able to retire a long time ago. Instead, he lives by the business philosophy of “don’t worry about it” and “we’ll figure it out” and he is such a genuine sweetheart that you wind up falling all over yourself to give him money. And if you think you will EVER receive an actual bill – dream on.

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.