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| Power Style Wellness Connections |
You Have To Laugh : Flipped
By Barbara A. Tyler
I know the secret to making marriage last. It’s not holding
hands and taking long romantic walks on a beach. You don't
need candlelight dinners and strolling violins.
All you need to ignite the most passionate side of your other
half is, are you ready?
Home Improvement Television.
Enter, Flip This House.
For those of you unfamiliar with the show, I’ll sum up. People buy a dumpy house.
People “flip” the house into a showcase by pouring truckloads of money into
improvements. People sell the house for a profit. And (joy of joys!) they do it all on
camera.
My husband and I discovered this show during one of our romantic afternoons. (Read
as: Lounging on the couch in the absence of kids, energy and anything sane and/or
meaningful to do.) We probably would have been fine had we tuned in to a single
episode. We were not so lucky. Our haphazard channel surfing dumped us right into the
middle of a Flip This House marathon. The word “marathon” did it. We weren’t vegging,
we were doing a mar-a-thon. That, right there, should have alerted us to the insidious
nature of the show. Anything that makes me feel good about watching TV should be
suspect. And right then, we were feeling pretty smug about our TV viewing habits. Here,
offered up on the screen, was proof that we weren’t just sofa-slugs!
Yes, I know this is not rational. Let’s not talk about it, okay?
For home improvement addicts, shows like this are the equivalent of crack cocaine.
There should be twelve-step programs, interventions, parental controls. But, no. By the
end of the third hour, our heads were filled with all sorts of destructive ways to reinvent
our home. Our eyes glazed over. Our hands began to itch to hold tools. If my husband
and I were comic strip characters, this would be the frame showing us facing each other
with mesmerized expressions; our eyeballs nothing more than circles enclosing endless
spirals. The joint thought-balloon above our heads would say: “Ooooooooooo, shiny.”
Why not just turn off the TV, you say? Oh, were it that simple. What you must
understand is that the TV functions as a safety net. As long as we watch, we can’t do.
This is a very important thing to remember. Because, I know that once the TV is off, our
restless eyeballs will start scanning the house, inventing one-thousand-and-one uses for
a crowbar and a tub of spackle. Before we know it, all the furniture is draped with our
best sheets, we’ve whipped out the kids’ Trouble game, and the fate of the largest
investment of our lives is now in the clutches of the all-knowing Pop-O-Matic.
“Okay, if you pop a two, we change the dimmer switch. Get a six, and we install the in-
ground pool. A four means ripping out the front wall and adding a picture window.”
Conversation becomes a collection of sweet nothings:
“C’mon, six! Mama needs a cabana boy!”
Talk about passion.
“I can’t believe you put a big hole in that wall!
You. Put a hole. Right there in that wall! What were you thinking?”
Talk about heat.
What do you mean, this doesn’t sound like a way to prolong a marriage? Trust me,
nothing unifies a couple faster than a money-eating project that forces them to stay
married until professionals can repair the damage so the house can be sold as part of
the property settlement.
Hey, it may not work for everyone, but at my house, the bonds formed while doing home
improvement are stronger than Liquid Nails.
Barbara A. Tyler is a writer from New Albany, Ind.
By Barbara A. Tyler
I know the secret to making marriage last. It’s not holding
hands and taking long romantic walks on a beach. You don't
need candlelight dinners and strolling violins.
All you need to ignite the most passionate side of your other
half is, are you ready?
Home Improvement Television.
Enter, Flip This House.
For those of you unfamiliar with the show, I’ll sum up. People buy a dumpy house.
People “flip” the house into a showcase by pouring truckloads of money into
improvements. People sell the house for a profit. And (joy of joys!) they do it all on
camera.
My husband and I discovered this show during one of our romantic afternoons. (Read
as: Lounging on the couch in the absence of kids, energy and anything sane and/or
meaningful to do.) We probably would have been fine had we tuned in to a single
episode. We were not so lucky. Our haphazard channel surfing dumped us right into the
middle of a Flip This House marathon. The word “marathon” did it. We weren’t vegging,
we were doing a mar-a-thon. That, right there, should have alerted us to the insidious
nature of the show. Anything that makes me feel good about watching TV should be
suspect. And right then, we were feeling pretty smug about our TV viewing habits. Here,
offered up on the screen, was proof that we weren’t just sofa-slugs!
Yes, I know this is not rational. Let’s not talk about it, okay?
For home improvement addicts, shows like this are the equivalent of crack cocaine.
There should be twelve-step programs, interventions, parental controls. But, no. By the
end of the third hour, our heads were filled with all sorts of destructive ways to reinvent
our home. Our eyes glazed over. Our hands began to itch to hold tools. If my husband
and I were comic strip characters, this would be the frame showing us facing each other
with mesmerized expressions; our eyeballs nothing more than circles enclosing endless
spirals. The joint thought-balloon above our heads would say: “Ooooooooooo, shiny.”
Why not just turn off the TV, you say? Oh, were it that simple. What you must
understand is that the TV functions as a safety net. As long as we watch, we can’t do.
This is a very important thing to remember. Because, I know that once the TV is off, our
restless eyeballs will start scanning the house, inventing one-thousand-and-one uses for
a crowbar and a tub of spackle. Before we know it, all the furniture is draped with our
best sheets, we’ve whipped out the kids’ Trouble game, and the fate of the largest
investment of our lives is now in the clutches of the all-knowing Pop-O-Matic.
“Okay, if you pop a two, we change the dimmer switch. Get a six, and we install the in-
ground pool. A four means ripping out the front wall and adding a picture window.”
Conversation becomes a collection of sweet nothings:
“C’mon, six! Mama needs a cabana boy!”
Talk about passion.
“I can’t believe you put a big hole in that wall!
You. Put a hole. Right there in that wall! What were you thinking?”
Talk about heat.
What do you mean, this doesn’t sound like a way to prolong a marriage? Trust me,
nothing unifies a couple faster than a money-eating project that forces them to stay
married until professionals can repair the damage so the house can be sold as part of
the property settlement.
Hey, it may not work for everyone, but at my house, the bonds formed while doing home
improvement are stronger than Liquid Nails.
Barbara A. Tyler is a writer from New Albany, Ind.
