Sham-a-lot: Story of an addict

By Gina Angostura
NH Mirror Staff

I finally had to get help. It was an addiction that was truly threatening my health, my sanity, even my very soul. It wasn’t alcohol, nor was it drugs. And we all know it wasn’t a man, as there have been no men in my general vicinity in quite some time. Besides, I gave them up. I don’t touch the stuff anymore.

No, this is something much harder to give up, something that’s the shame of my life: I’m addicted to house porn.

The constant paging through Cottage Living and Home magazines. Slobbering over dream kitchens and master bathrooms bigger than my apartment. Knowing the difference between a bidet and a duvet. (Believe me, you need to know that.)

I found myself jonesing for wood floors and white bedding. You might even call me a “sheet walker,” as I’d do just about anything for high-thread-count linens.

What I was hooked on most of all was the Home and Garden channel. I’d spend all weekend watching, fascinated, as Candace and Kitty and Joan and all those cute guys with their jeans and tape measures took houses apart and put them back together. It’s bad when you neglect your own housework because you have to see how a home office can be redone in five hours, and you don’t even HAVE a home office.

But, unfortunately, even the magazines are out of my price range, and soon I was spending way too much time and money on my habit. When I considered selling my grandma’s antique Dragonware china – the only objects of distinction I own – to fund my need for pretty pictures, I knew it was time to stop.

So I went cold turkey – I canceled my extended cable subscription.

The difference between the $50 extended and the $9 basic plan is like the difference between first class and flying tied to the wing.

Abandoning HGTV and Comedy Central and the History Channel, I’m now left with two public TV channels, a local cable access channel, three Spanish channels that are all incomprehensible soaps and game shows, a French channel, three home shopping channels and maybe a few network channels on which all I ever catch are reruns of “Two and a Half Men.” Which is what I named a recent trip my two grown sons took with their father.

But at least now I’m a little less feverish about home stuff I’ll never have.

And I can finally forgive the woman, who definitely lives where the other half does, who told me she couldn’t do something for me because she had to wait at home for new carpet to be delivered for her master bedroom and family room. Plus, she had to empty the entertainment center to have it moved, and her husband was out of town, and how much stress she was going through.

I just wanted to shake her and scream: “I have no carpet, I have no entertainment center and I have no husband! So quit your freaking whining!”

But now, with my addiction a thing of the past, I’m all zen about such things. I shall now retire to my undecorated living room and sit in the lotus position on my bare floor to watch “Tierra de Pasiones.”

Does your misery love company? Send Gina an e-mail at singlecynic@thenhmirror.com.