Nesting Nightmare

"You're nesting." So my friend smugly informed me a week or two ago, when I told her of my upcoming plans to paint the apartment. "What?" I stammered. It sounded awfully, painfully domestic.

"Yep, you're nesting. Next thing you know, you're going to have a mortgage and babies!" I knew she was just teasing, but it messed with my mind considerably, to the point that I started to doubt the home decor plans the Object and I had labored over for quite some time. Every home decor guru out there says that painting is the cheapest and easiest way to snazz up your house. They do not warn about the side effects of vibrant colorful walls, but really, they should. Something like this would have been useful:

"WARNING: Applying this product to your walls may cause it to appear as though a tragic Smurf-Oompa Loompa massacre went down in your house, further causing the man in your life to curl into a fetal position, sucking his thumb in a post-traumatic stress induced coma and shivering that he is 'so cold, so very, very c-c-c-c-coooooooooooold.' "

In reality, the paint job was a lot worse than that and we kind of hated each other for a little while (apparently, nesting makes you not terribly excited to nest), but at least a warning would have been nice. In an effort to cheer ourselves up, we got out of the house, but that only made the situation worse, since we started seeing the color pattern everywhere - and not in places that we especially wanted to reflect our collective personalities. "Look, the Sudanese restaurant has the same color scheme; apparently, we're kind of tacky and smell vaguely of burnt goat!"

After a myriad of helpful suggestions (which would have been much more helpful before we started painting), we made the house look a little less like the site of a nuclear accident in an Easter egg factory and so we decided to host a housewarming. Planningwise, Saturday was out, so that whomever wanted to could spend their sunny Saturday afternoon atoning (Of course, we had no idea that we would be spending the day atoning for our own house sins, but that's neither here nor there).

We also wholly underestimated the drawing power of the NFL, and so only our friends who live very close by and/or actually like us and aren't just there for the food showed up. One showed up with "friendship bread" and a baby, which was delightful to no end, especially when they started to show the baby's tricks. Two of our friends are getting married to each other in two weeks, and they had very different looks on their faces when the baby came in the door, much to the amusement of everyone (except the groom-to-be). By far the biggest hit of the night was when Lionel "swaddled" the baby, and all the guys got very excited at the baby's similitude to a burrito. "Can you bowl with her?" someone wondered. "Absolutely!" Lionel beamed with paternal pride.

It ended up being the perfect housewarming - chill and intimate - and helpful, too. Our friends, noticing the disastrous walls, were happy to offer their home improvement suggestions, which they guaranteed will improve the quality of our lives. I'm pretty sure we can work some of them out:

• Move the coasters to the ledge (near where guest was sitting)
• Keg of root beer
• TV always playing High School Musical
• Armchair in living room (for guest to sit in)
• Make one wall a chalkboard
• Pinatas full of quaaludes
• Velociraptors
• Bathroom faucet pours peach-basil sangria
• Move party food to coffee table (near where guest was sitting)
• BUMPER CARS
• No fat chicks
• All parties hosted by Mark Summers
  
• Teach cat to sing
  
• As soon as you enter apartment, you are in black and white