Springtime

I realize this is not news to most of the rest of the country, but spring is here. (It's news in Minnesota.)

And with spring comes all the annual springtime rituals: Trips to the garden supply store. Trips back to the garden supply store to return the stuff you just bought. Desperate phone calls to everyone on your list to see if anyone knows anything about gardening. Hopeless calls to landscapers who have bigger and better projects way ahead of you. lady.

And of course, the annual "Tour of Homes."

Every year here in the Cities somebody sponsors a "Tour of Homes." This is where people who are dying to do such things invite total strangers to traipse through their houses. Occasionally the home is about to go on the market, but more often than not the owners just want to show off their crib.

DIH does not know why anyone in his right mind would do such a thing. Unless it's to provide oneself with a "home improvement project" deadline. "We have to get the wiring redone! We're having company tomorrow!"

Still DIH cannot deny a certain voyeuristic appeal to the Tour. So, a couple of weeks ago, me and a couple of the Bible Babes hit the road with a map of homes and a phony "yes-of-course-we-paid-for-this" pass.

One sees the usual stuff. "Cottage style" houses so cute you feel an urge to suck your thumb, just before you fell an urge to throw up. "Modern" homes where they don't really have to label the furniture "Please Do Not Sit," as if anyone would want to get comfortable on an anvil. And of course, the restored Victorians.

Restored Victorians are a big draw on the Home Tour. Everyone wants to see these overdone, overstuffed babies. House-gawkers love to gush over the woodwork! the pocket doors! the butler's pantries! OMG- is that a real "servants' wing??!!"

We were on our third or fourth Victorian when we hit the classic of the genre: the kind lovingly and painstakingly restored by two gay guys with a ton of money and a major attitude.

DIH is a believer in private property. She believes if you want to sully your abode with ugly furniture and uglier but really expensive antiques, well, that's up to you. It is a bit of a mystery to her why you'd want to broadcast your bad taste by signing up for the Home tour, but to each his own.

SO DIH was okay with the ancient but restored oven ("It's a bear to work with, but it's just so perfect!" the owner's buddies gushed). She was okay with the occasional "statements" throughout the house. "Be happy and gay!" (get it? oh, the wit!)

But then she came to the bathroom. Which was another statement.

There were a lot of pictures in this house and a lot of crummy statuary. But the bathroom was reserved for the "religious art" collection. Every inch of available wallspace surrounding the toilet was covered with scenes from the life of Christ. Last Suppers, crucifixes, depictions of the Virgin Mary and so on.

Was it a statemnt? Of course it was.

The statement being, "Not only do we have no taste, we have no manners, either."

There was something profoundly sickening about the idea that someone would do this and think he was being daring, or clever, or smart. But almost as sickening was the thought that it never occurred to these guys that they might be offending their invited guests. Because they did invite them, they signed up for the Home Tour. And they surely knew many of the people who walked through their home would be Christians.

I get the hostility. I just don't get the plain old garden-variety rudeness.

If this is sophistication you can have it.