I live alone with a beautifully blissful love of solitude. Spent four years of my life as a full-time freelancer and never had to speak to another human being except for the occasional managing editor, and I hated to have to go back to office jobs when the work dried up in 2019.

I really miss experiencing pure solitude in my home. My husband is retired and is present almost all the time. It also so happens that he times his own outings for those times when I’m already committed to some task. I am longing for a few hours of absolute solitude to luxuriate in. Don’t misunderstand me, he’s a…

Yeah, good point about getting screwed over in special ways. As a pharmacist I’ve been employed throughout the pandemic. I should be extremely happy to be as fortunate as I am, esp compared to the difficulties so many are facing. And I am, but I have to constantly ward off jealously of others who have gotten time off…

Exactly, yeah. I guess it’s an easy thing to be ‘sure’ of but at the same time, I just think - if I stumbled into a pot of gold with enough to live comfortably off of for the rest of my life, I live off of it. I set up a couple funds to support family, maybe, but needing to build a damn empire... no thanks!

To be fair, we put a bowl of lemons out when we were staging our house to be sold and several notes from the open house mentioned the bowl of lemons.

“I didn’t know I wanted this house until I saw just how well a bowl of lemons fits right there!  Do you think they’d let me keep it?”

Dammit, Christians are really starting to fall behind in the space-ray department!

I lived in Waco for a while and waited tables at a restaurant Chip and Joanna went to almost every Saturday night and I typically was the one waiting on their table. This was years before they had their show. They were always nice and largely the same as you see them on TV, the personalities are real and not made up…

6.) Put bowls of lemons everywhere.

“Audacity” is the right word. I really don’t relate to people who are wildly successful and keep upping the ante with riskier, more complicated and demanding ventures. Google says they’re worth $20 million and I have to believe it’s more than that, and assume the dough would continue rolling in without a ton of…

nah, I heard it was the Muslim freeze ray from the Moon.

So do all sane people, hopefully. They’re probably just as fake but they hide it a lot better (and the houses haven’t started pushing 700k+ yet, generally, which is when reno shows get fucking boring). 

Good list. Bad format. Slide shows are the worst.

People always rise to the level of their incompetence. The Gaineses were good at running a home flipping business and good at being the stars of a once a week home reno show that saved houses that were basically falling apart and make them look nice (I won’t get into personal taste here - some people like it, some…

How to remodel your house according to Magnolia:

They are prosperity Christians. They believe that they are entitled to rule the world.

Look, I’m gonna say it -- I like Ben and Erin more. 

Clint Harper, the woodworker ... gets his own program, too.

I may have my “unsettlingly charming red-state couple who do home renovations on TV” misremembered, but aren’t these also the folks who almost exclusively do renos for people from their church? Like, I’m sure they’re nice enough but that kind of self-dealing never sits right with me.