The House that Neiman Marcus Furnished

On Sunday, we went to my parents' for a visit. The kids hadn't seen them in a long time. And thanks to Tivo, I knew I wouldn't miss any of the good TV last night (i.e. the commercials).

Their place is pretty frightening. No, not in the haunted house way. More along the lines of "I may have seen my future, and I don't like it." DearWife and I both come from long lines of knick-knacky people. And I have no pull in the decorating arena. So my fate is a house full of knick-knacks.

More frightening than that is the sheer amount of skin-care products. They could (literally) fill a trunk of a large car with just their shea-butter based products. Add in oatmeal and papaya extract products, and you would bottom that car out. Shockingly, it's my father who is the worst culprit.

I am the complete opposite. I'm still irritated that I can't buy soap. I mean, regular soap. Try going to the store, and finding non-scented, non-deodorant, non-moisturizing soap. It does not exist. When did that happen? So I almost screamed in horror, when I saw this product, with the following tag line on my paretns sink:

Love well made, like anything well made, leaves you with a glow that stays with you long after your heart is calm and your engines are no longer burning.

That is not something I want to see in my parents house. They can have it in their house, but this is clearly "don't ask don't tell territory." Of course, in my parents hippy-esque days (as hippy as you can get as an accounting student I suppose), my mom once put up a poster with a swingers motto on it. Apparently, this led to an interesting conversation with a couple neighbors. But that's a story for a different time.

There is one very cool historical item that almost makes up for their decorating style. It is an unused 1965 concert ticket. My Mom somehow got a ticket to the biggest concert in Chicago. And, as the story goes, her mom refused to let her go into the big city. So, even though she didn't get to see the Beatles in their prime, at least she gets the ultimate trump card over her mom.