My wife and I decided to visit a home and interior decorating show recently.We've

bought a new house and are looking for ideas. Some things that we want to do with the new place are obvious, others are open for discussion.

For example, as soon as we take possession of the new house, the movers will be told that they are to simply put the living room and dining room furniture in the middle of the room, because painters will be arriving the next day to change the color of the walls in those two rooms. Combined the two rooms are twenty-eight feet by fifteen feet, and they are painted in one color.

One hideous color.

On its own it is a fine color. Whenever I have an upset stomach, I open the medicine cabinet and look for that color. Somehow though, I cannot see myself sitting comfortably at the dining room table surrounded by Pepto-Bismol pink.

I think it might send a subliminal message about the quality of the food I'm eating.

Wandering around the inside of a football stadium filled with booths offering everything from hardwood floors to custom made mahogany dog food bowl holders, shows that while some companies have made it into the twenty-first century, others are still anchored mid-way through the last one.

A company selling irons had a sign in their display that said, "Your husband called and said you could buy this iron."

I may from time to time be a bit on the chauvinistic side, but I would never have survived thirty-three years of marriage if I had been saying what my wife could or could not buy.

The only way a sign like that would have any relevance in our house would be if it said, "Your wife called and said you should do your own damn ironing."

I wish these shows would limit the number of carnie wannabes. There seemed to be at least one in every aisle, hawking some new product that would purportedly change our lives if we would just liberate $49.95 from deep within our wallets. These people all had microphones attached to their heads and let loose with an endless highvolume dissertation about never-need-sharpening knives, brooms that collect dust, pet hair and cookie crumbs with an electrostatic charge, and miracle dusters that clean blinds, hard to reach corners and the lint from your dryer hose. All conversation had to stop whenever you got within fifty feet of one of their booths, because no one in the vicinity could possibly talk over top of the prattle.

For the most part we are in agreement about what we want to do with the new house. We both liked the wide-plank hardwood floors, the granite countertops, and the wood and stone fireplace walls.We also both agreed that there would be no room in the new house for the life-sized statue of a buffalo.

The eight foot tapestry of the last supper was also near the top of both our, "I don't think so" lists, as was the entire selection of paintings in the 'everything under $50.00' booth. Most of them looked liked they had been painted by drunken monkeys.

That's not to say there are still some differences in the way we look at things.We have decided that the move will be a good time to replace the living room furniture. For Diane that means new sofas and chairs. I'm thinking more in line with a fifty or sixty-inch flat-screen high definition TV.

After all, you can always watch a hockey game while sitting on the floor.

I finally relented and tried out a leather sofa complete with reclining footrests. After walking around the show floor for an hour and a half on my crutches, I thought I might just spend the rest of the day there. I asked the exhibitor if she would mind just crating me up at the end of the show and shipping me back home.

She declined.

We came away with a lot of really good ideas to put into our new home, and one rather sizable problem.

How are we going to pay for it all?

2006, Gordon Kirkland