Awesome image by Natalie Dee, of course.

As y’all know, I often get a good larf out of Audrey Irvine’s dreadful “Relationship Rant” columns on CNN. For retro anti-woman thinking and twisted “insights,” I crowned two of them the Most Ridonkulous Op-Eds of 2009 and 2010. But today, lo and behold, I found myself agreeing with one! SRSLY. Please mark this special day on your calendars, because it is not likely to come around again.

Her latest post is “Bought a house so I must want kids?” and in this episode of Audrey’s adventures, she has friends over to her new three-bedroom house for a cookout. Nosy questions abounded!:

Each group that I showed around the house –regardless of age or gender — had the same question when they saw the two spare bedrooms.

“So, what do you plan to do with THESE bedrooms?”

I pondered the question each time, realizing I couldn’t say I’d use it as an office since I had one set up downstairs. My answers varied from “how about a guest room” to “possibly a home gym” to “I really don’t know.” Their reaction each and every time was exactly the same: “How about some kids?” My first response was “with whom?” — seriously, I am not married– then I realized they were referring to my new beau.

Yes, mortgage + multiple bedrooms + boyfriend = impending kids. Truefax.

I admit, I sympathize. When I bought a one-bedroom apartment at age 27, certain people in my life assumed that buying only a single, lonely bedroom meant I was committing to permanent spinsterhood.

As one of my snarky dumbass peers put it, “why buy a place for yourself unless you already know you don’t want to share it?” Never mind that you can share a one bedroom apartment with a partner—as most couples I know do. Or that a two bedroom in New York City was well beyond my means anyway. A woman buying a home with her own money is seen as a declaration of intent, even if I was simply making a commitment to my own happiness and financial security. That was Audrey’s logic too:

I gave all the right answers: that buying a house made more sense than a townhouse in this market, I realized the amount of equity I could get buying in this neighborhood and of course the first-time home buyer credit was too much to pass up.

No one seemed interested in those answers, so the conversation quickly changed to something else.

Because if it’s not about a single woman’s path to marriage and kids, then, really, who cares? After all, marriage and children are the ultimate goal of all women:

Society does seem to put an enormous amount of pressure on women once they hit the later years of childbearing age. (ed: ya think?) Assumptions are made that every personal decision is a reflection of your desire to have, or not have, children.

What’s funny is that the majority of the comments on CNN—most of which are safe to read, for a change—seemed to say “fuck the busybodies, enjoy your house!”  I happen to agree with those too. Group hug, everyone!

(Tomorrow—a return to our usual contentious feminist caterwauling).

Via Design Public @ Flickr

“Bed is the best place for reading, thinking, or doing nothing.”–Doris Lessing

Dear readers, I’ve become obsessed with sheets. Colors!  Textures!  Thread counts!  The exotic orgins of their cottons!  Egypt!  Pakistan! Indonesia!  Now, generally speaking, I am not fascinated by the housewifely arts; a mere glimpse of Martha Stewart sends me diving for the remote.   But as I’ve mentioned before, I’m lazy and my preferred position is horizontal, so it follows that I spend a lot of time in bed, both alone and with gentleman callers.  I also sleep naked, which caused quite a scandal among the nice Baptist and Methodist prudes girls of the Southern college I attended (not that they ever actually saw me naked, but they heard about it from my roommate and believe me, eyebrows were raised).  Sleeping in the nude is a matter of comfort—as an active sleeper, I always got uncomfortably tangled up in nightgowns—but it’s also a sensual pleasure, and one I refused to apologize for.  It does mean, however, that I can’t stand cheap and scratchy sheets, so I’ve become positively fussy and Victorian in my quest for good bedding.

If you do the math, you’ll realize that high-quality bedding gives you a terrific return on your investment.  At an average of seven hours of sleep per night, you’ll be using that bedding 49 hours a week, 2,548 hours a year—and that’s not counting the hours you spend in bed reading, watching TV, surfing the web, making love, etc.  So by all means, put some money into making yourself as comfy as possible—a quality set of sheets will last you for many years and will amortize better than anything else you own.

Personally, I own four sets of sheets, ranging from flannel to combed cotton to t-shirt material.  The t-shirt sheets are increasingly hard to find, which is a damn shame, because they are like sleeping wrapped in your oldest, softest oversize t-shirt–the one that’s been washed a million times and is so faded and disreputable looking that you refuse to wear it outside and yet you can’t give it up because it feels so nice.  Flannel is wonderful if, like me, you sleep in a drafty bedroom and need maximum snuggliness from November through March.   Regular cotton is the ultimate cooling, breathable fabric if the same drafty bedroom becomes uncomfortably sticky in the summer months.   Avoid polyester blends at all costs (a good life lesson in general).  You need at least 400 thread count for maximum softness and durability—anything lower will be scratchy and prone to pilling.   The truly high-end, luxury sheets are 800-1200 threadcount.  I have a pair of 800 thread count sheets but to be honest, they don’t feel significantly better than the 400 thread count ones, so you might as well save the extra money and buy some nice pillowcases with it.  I also recommend you don’t bother with big retailers like Macy’s or Bed, Bath & Beyond to buy your sheets.  All my bedding is from either Overstock or Smartbargains, where the selection is excellent and the prices run 50-80% off what you’d pay at a department or big box store (don’t worry, both sites will give you full info about color, size and thread count).  To be honest, I’d own even more sheet sets if I could, but space in my linen closet is limited and I decided to spend the rest of my bedding money on a big fluffy duvet with 400 thread count polished cotton cover. 

Having my own home, and choosing its furnishings is one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life.  As a single woman, my house is the one place where I hold absolute sway, and feathering my nest—or cottoning it, as the case may be—is sheer delight.