Bugger the bourgeoisie

A picture is worth a thousand words. I was looking at a picture today that I took this morning of my daughter in her pretty pink princess dress perched ever-so-ladylike on the counter drinking a glass of juice. She stops and gives me a smile for the camera. I notice the background, how you can see my impressive array of cutting boards and Cutco knives. That the light seems to always be shining in pictures of my kitchen. I try to view my photos from another person's perspective.

I went over to a friends house for the first time the other night. It was a beautiful home in one of those newer developments. The ones that are still getting sodded. The couch was so nice. Big and cushy and new. The kitchen was shiny and pretty. All the furniture matched. I looked in the master bedroom and there was this big beautiful bed with the matching dressers and drapes on the windows. New. Shiny. Pretty. What they must think of my home, I wonder. My couch has been through almost as much as I have. In fact, I broke it even more the other day and now one side sits six inches higher than the other. There are stains and holes in it. My end tables are incredibly dull and mundane. My kitchen table is nice, but it came from the return section at JC Pennys and already had those scratches and we only have three chairs and they don't match. Ashley's bedroom furniture came from a friend who was going to throw it away if we didn't want it. Our bed in our room is very, very nice (thanks Brian!) but we have no bed frame or headboard. Our dressers were my ex-husbands grandfathers and they look like it. Squished in between all this, is the dog kennel. The walls are not painted, although I hope to soon requtify this. It's very hodge-podge, a conglomerate mesh of all the things I've managed to acquire in the last en years of so. None of it is new. The office is covered on posters, The Cramps, The Cure, The Misfits, Rancid, Bad Religion, and the Street Dogs. And I just wonder what the nice organized, well-decorated types think of us.

Then I think about my first apartment where I was lucky to have a couch. I decorated my walls with ripped up magazine articles and I never did the dishes. Or swept. And I think about all the people who less than me. Either because of circumstances or by choice. What so they think about all this? Do they think I'm selling out? Or buying in? Or maybe I'm just tired of cramped little apartments and giving my money to someone else.

And some people I know place an incredible value on what you have. And to some I have very very little and to others, I have so so much. I mean, to me, I have the world. But that has nothing to do with this hardwood haven that I wonder through at night.

So...does baking my own bread make me revolutionary or recessionary? Can I be a little bit of both?

Bugger the bourgeoisie, I've got an identity to maintain (change, find, mold, create)