"Is that Aunt Pittipat, I hear?"

The Pottery Barn catalog takes my senses apart puts each in a 600 thread count tub of fantastic bs and creates a swoon fest of images of how life could be if I hadn’t mindlessly filled my house with all the feng shui killer stuff I already live with.

The Pottery Barn catalog sinks a nostalgia chip in my right brain and turns me into a Manchurian Candidate zombie ready to kill in order to buy the Charlston Sofa that has a “soft inviting shape and six scatterback pillows.” Is that Aunt Pittipat I hear visiting from Atlanta? I want the Hamilton coffee table “expertly crafted from reclaimed pine.” Reclaimed pine! I’m a connoisseur, yippee!

I want the two arched windows in back of the sofa with the weathered full-length Celadon shutter doors and a Clemons bamboo window ledge mirror in between. Even more, I want the muted sunlight spilling in, creating a forever late-afternoon half-light over the candles on the coffee table and the books stacked next to them.

In my bathroom the Mason wood console crafted from reclaimed pine with pronounced grain and visible cracks and fissures and retrofitted to serve a new use holds my porcelain sink. See the four 500 thread count terry towels in rose, moss, pewter and pumpkin stacked in the galvanized metal floor storage trolley and the wicker basket with eight eternally unused loofahs. This is just like Shelley’s Ode To A Grecian Urn, isn’t it? Everything remains uncorrupted by time or use. This bathroom makes me want to cry with appreciation.

Oh, the bedroom. Simplicity and fine craftsmanship are the hallmarks of my Farmhouse Bed masterfully crafted to mimic and honor classic Shaker furniture. I’ve crowned my bed with a deep pillowed mattress dressed with the Morgan 400 thread count duvet cover and sham and the Morgan 400 thread count sheets with flat piping and a slim mitered border made by fine Italian hands and not slovenly American ones.

I have no closing remark for this post except that I am a “reclaimed” writer with visible cracks and retrofitted to serve a new use.