Samantha really doesn’t ever shut up about home decorating. When Amanda said that, I sort of dismissed it, but it’s actually true. I always thought she had more interest in the topic than your average Joe, but I hadn’t clocked the full extent of it. It’s virtually all she talks about, and she does so with a feverish excitement that makes me feel at once on edge and motivate to organise an overhaul of my home’s interiors.
It really sunk in today when we were out having a ‘window shopping and natter’ session at the mall. I was trying to engage a deep conversation about relationships, as I felt I really needed that, but she kept somehow bringing it back to new-season kitchen cabinetry. Forest green, apparently, is bang on trend, with navy on its heels.
Now, I’m as happy to hear about on-trend home furnishings as the next person, but I don’t see how any of this connects to my relationship crisis. I feel like Samantha wasn’t even listening. She did try to spin some metaphor about kitchen interior design being comparable to processes of individual development in long-term partnering, but it was a bit of a token effort if you ask me.
So there I was, feeling a touch hurt by my friend’s failure to read between the lines of my conversation-making, when she launched into a brutal analysis of my kitchen. She totally eviscerated it, actually. She said the pantry design was inefficient, the sink and tapware outdated, and the floor space begging for a kitchen island to be installed. I could address all this, she claimed, if I’d only stop wallowing in my fear of renovations for long enough to realise the potential of the space.
Thinking over this now, I’m starting to wonder if it’s all an elaborate extended metaphor. Maybe she was imparting some self-help gold the whole time, heavily veiled in references to kitchen refacing.