Flowers In The Guest Room

Ed. Note: The Gold Digger is back.  This time she will help us with that pesky warm hospitality/charming decorating conundrum: What does the perfect hostess put into the guest room to welcome family and friends? 

I've chosen a few photographs of bedrooms created by one of my best and oldest friends, the brilliant interior decorator, Betty Lou Phillips. You'll note importance of flowers here. . .

When I was a Peace Corps volunteer and couldn't afford anything - except a cleaning lady once a week, but before you laugh and judge me, know that it was cheaper to have someone clean my house and wash my clothes by hand than it was to take my clothes to the laundromat, although when you factor in how quickly clothes are ruined by being scrubbed on a pine board, maybe the laundromat would have been a better long-term option, I vowed that once I had a real money job again, I would do three things:

1. Have a cleaning lady - which I already had, but she was an awful cleaning lady. I would get someone who actually cleaned my house and of whose personal life I knew nothing so I wouldn't have to feel bad about firing her if she did a crummy job. How can you fire someone who is the sole support of her widowed, ailing mother? You can't. You continue to pay her $10 a week (which was four times the market rate) and then clean your house yourself. Or take off your glasses when you are inside so you can't see the dirt.

2. Get new underwear every year.

3. Have fresh flowers in the house all the time.

I did all three things for a while. When I finally got my post-Peace Corps job, which took a while because apparently, corporate employers think Peace Corps volunteers come to work in Tevas and dreadlocks, I got a cleaning lady who came once every three weeks.

She cost a lot more than ten dollars.

I threw away all my old underwear, which seemed horribly wasteful, but I reminded myself that I was preventing possible humiliation should I be in a car accident.

And I started buying flowers.

Then I got married and I became the cleaning lady. At first, my husband got flowers. Now, alas, he does not. But I try to keep flowers in the house. When we have houseguests, I put flowers in the guest bath and bedroom. Usually, that's easy: I just cut something from my garden. Shockingly, we don't get many houseguests in the winter, so the lack of garden flowers is not an issue. Why don't people want to come to Milwaukee in January?

But I've always thought flowers for guests - in addition to a few bottles of water and some snacks, usually a bowl of chocolate from the Chocolate Drawer - are a nice touch.

So I was very pleased a few years ago when my husband and I visited his parents and discovered flowers in the guest room. They were from the hisbiscus bush in the front yard, but that's OK. They were pretty and, more importantly, showed that perhaps my husband's mother had begun to change her attitude about me since the initial, "We're not coming to the wedding and you better not marry her" hissy fit.

I was pleased. She was finally coming around. I was not the monster she thought I was. She was admitting she was wrong about me! No words, but a gesture suffices.

I left the bedroom and found her. "Thank you for the flowers!" I said. "They are lovely."

She looked confused. "What flowers?"

"In the bedroom. On the dresser."

"Oh!" she said. "The cleaning lady must have left those."

At least the cleaning lady liked me.


Ed. Note: If you, like moi meme cannot get enough of my friend, let's call her Melissa or Miranda -- something like that -- do visit her at one or both of her blogs: The Diary of A Gold Digger or the other one.

A Gold Digger Considers Silver

Decisions, decisions. What to do about going gray -- or not?

If you don't know my pal, The Gold Digger,  it's never too late to discover a couple of the great joys of this fun-filled blogosphere we live in. Thankfully she has agreed to fill-in for me from time to time because I reallllly must get cracking on this book thing or I'll be in big trouble.

She writes so well and is very funny and has great ideas and from the paragraphs below she seems to like me so I'm more than pleased she'll be here and I'm sure you will be as well.

Here then. . . ta-daa is The Gold Digger!

I am so honored that Tish has invited me to be a guest blogger. I am not a fashion/style/beauty expert. Far from it. As I write this, I am sitting in my running clothes, which is not so bad, but it took me until 12:30 p.m. to change out of my pajamas. I will  be showered and dressed before 5:00, I promise.

[And I broke that promise. I was showered. But not dressed. Unless you count the new fluffy pink bathrobe that was a Christmas present from your sister as "dressed."]

Tish is good for me because she has motivated me to take a little more care with my appearance (despite today's attire) than I have been. When one is an unemployed gold-digger living off her used husband, it is hard to find the motivation to sparkle, although really, that should be the motivation right there - a gold-digger should try to keep her husband really happy, wouldn't you think? But thanks to Tish, I make more of an effort now. I even use the proper product for removing my eye makeup! Did you know you are not supposed to use just soap and water? I didn't. Not until Tish.

Here is my current fashion dilemma: What should I do about my hair? I am asking you because I have read the comments and visited the blogs of those who come here and I know I am in the presence of giants. Of women who Know These Things. I need your help.


My hair used to be blonde - naturally blonde - and then I stopped working as a lifeguard and a swimming teacher in the summer and had to stay inside all year.

Maybe that's not natural blonde. Maybe that's with an assist from the sun and the chlorine blonde. Then it became with an assist from John the stylist at the West University salon in Houston. Then I became a Peace Corps volunteer and you don't even want to know what happened then but it wasn't pretty. A 20 hour bus ride + a showing of "Ghost" on that ride = very bad hair decision for moi.

For the past several years, it has been Clairol Natural Instincts #24 Clove. I dallied with #22 Cinaberry for a while, but red is too hard to maintain and magenta-y red is even harder.

Now it is #24 Clove with gray roots. I used to color it because I wanted a change. Now I color because I am not ready to be drab with shots of gray.

This doesn't make sense to me, but it appears whoever made the chart has decided to fight nature.

But it is getting harder to cover the gray.

Lisa covered this issue a while ago, but she is 1. an actual blonde 2. going a nice silvery gray.

I am a used-to-be blonde turned mousy brown turned oh so drab with some steely gray at the part.

Spending $100 a month for a professional to color my hair is not an option. I am a gold-digger, but there is not that much gold to dig.

What do I do?

PS Come see me at my blog, The Diary of A Gold Digger, or at my other blog.