Lost in the maze of makeovers

Dear Patty,

Five gay guys come into your house, redecorate, get you an expensive haircut and clothes they like. Suddenly you're supposed to be a new man. The idea makes entertaining television but doesn't really work, of course. If the Fab Five returned a few months later they'd find the same slob's new designer decanter filled with grape seeds.

Getting made over seems to be everyone's dream these days. We makeover rooms, houses, hairstyles, bodies, whole lives. But most makeovers are, like most things made for TV, evanescent.

Real change doesn't occur from the outside. It happens when we change our minds about ourselves and our relationship with the world and use the power of our will to strike out in a different direction.

When the inside changes it is reflected on the outside.

Of course, if getting aligned with the intentions of the soul were easy, only saints would walk the earth. That's why makeovers are so popular.

In DC's current favorite TV show, "Mission: Organization," highly organized people show highly disorganized people how to turn their cluttered existence into an environment that is serene in its orderliness. I have not seen this show but would like to see the look on DC's face as this transformation occurs. Does she glow with appreciation at their ingenuity or frown at the disruption the organized are inflicting on the disorganized?

This is in doubt.

Her solution to disorganization is to bring in large plastic bins for storing things we don't really need. We have tens of them in the basement, more upstairs in the spare bedrooms and hallways. Our house is overrun with storage bins.

I'm starting to get used to them. They're like pieces of furniture. But for the last month, half of our real living room furniture has been residing in the foyer, clogging it so badly we must use the back stairs to reach the second floor. The other half of our living room furniture is in the den. Our house looks like a perpetual tag sale.

It's because DC is making over the living room floor. There has been much bleaching, sanding and spreading of a deadly smelling polymer.

I have not been invited to help. The last time I tried sanding a floor the machine got the better of me and sent chunks of ancient wood flying. DC reassures me that this is her project and suggests I go upstairs and read a book or watch multi-millionaires play golf. I readily agree.

My solution to refinishing floors would be to hire someone who knows all about them, an expert in makeovers. Then life can quickly return to normal. But DC comes from a do-it-yourself family. She spent much of her childhood weekends rewiring, refinishing and rehabilitating. She is not made over. She makes over.

The job of refinishing the floor has taken much longer than expected, of course. Now that we're almost ready to move the furniture back in, I'm thinking we need to ask a gay guy for advice.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is the managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.