Decorating Tips From The Great Beyond

"I can see the ugly wallpaper in this pan." 

Just one more bureaucratic step and my future gorgeous daughter-in-law/future mother of my future adoring grandchildren gets to move here from France. Why would anyone forgo the Eiffel Tower for the Hollywood Sign? Amour, silly. Plain and simple. Amour! Somehow the SJG and hubby managed to produce the kind of son who could lure a beauty away from her homeland. How did we do it? We planted the idea early, pre-Bar Mitzvah. "One day, you'll marry someone wonderful." We left it at that and let him figure out the rest. My dad, however, offered a slightly different approach: "Make sure you marry someone with money." Fast forward to now, as we await her arrival, sanctioned by not one, but two governments. If that's not romantic, what is?

"I'll just sit here till the wallpaper goes away."

This: The eldest is now looking for an apartment, a love shack for a new life built for two. I can only imagine the advice my sweet daddy might offer. Something along the lines of, "Pick a place with the ugliest wallpaper you can find. That way, you'll know if she really loves you, despite your terrible decorating sense." Turns out, wallpaper was a big issue when my folks got hitched. According to my mom, their very first apartment had the most hideous wallpaper in the kitchen. She didn't just hate it. She loathed it. It was a thing. My father knew she hated it, but there was nothing he could do about it. When it came to this cruel decorative crime, he was powerless. But then, an option appeared. A way out. An opportunity  to put some real distance between my mother and that nauseating wallpaper. He found a job as a comedy writer for Jack Carter and moved my mom to New York. But he went there first to find an apartment. The place he found was terrific. Except for one little drawback that didn't even register with my dad until my mother stepped foot in her brand new digs and let out an epic geshrei. The kitchen in New York had the exact same hateful Los Angeles wallpaper my mother detested with every inch of her being. She stood by him, anyway, for almost 50 years. If a marriage can survive ugly wallpaper, it can survive anything.