"You're killing me Smalls!"

I must confess, when the hubs and I first moved in together I had my concerns regarding his decorating abilities. I recalled his beloved ugly sweater, which to his best friend and myself, looked more like a third-graders attempt at painting the Middle East. Then, there was his comfortable reading pillow which had the obvious nickname, "big, orange and fluffy." To his credit, he never had those standard college posters tacked up in his dorm room. I didn't have to compete with any Playboy Bunnies or swimsuit models.

Finally, after three and a half years of dating, we moved in together. I was living on a poor graduate student's stipend and the hubs was struggling to pay his student loans on a fresh out of college salary. At the time we were saving up for our wedding, so our decorating budget was practically non-existent. All of our furniture was either of the hand-me-down variety or from Ikea (and we're not talking the pretty stuff you can find at Ikea, I mean the dirt cheap Ikea finds). We still haven't upgraded our furniture because it makes sense to do so when we finally have a house. I followed the hubs' bouncing ball logic on that one (ha! he does win an argument once a blue moon).

This past weekend I decided that our basement needed a solid cleaning and organizing. Our basement is "technically" finished, but I would never subject any company to spending more than 30 seconds down there. It has that creepy, fake wood paneling from the 70s and it doesn't look like the carpet has been replaced since the wood paneling went up. The most charming quality is our half-bath. Yes, it's a random toilet located next to our utility sink. There is no wall, no door, no curtain even to section off the half-bath from the rest of the basement. To this day, I have never used that toilet.

There will be no before and after pictures of our basement. Really, I could be charged with endangering the welfare of humanity by broadcasting the mess that was (and still is) our basement. But, I can (and will) share a few photos of some of my hubs' more questionable trinkets. Yes, they are all O's related. No, I do not hate them because I am a Yankees fan. I like the O's. They're the home team and I do root for the home team.

Exhibit A:

(view from the top)


WTF????? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my husband is the proud owner of the world's ugliest side table. There are no words to describe this table. What makes it worse is that when we lived in our first apartment my hubs tried to use this table as his night stand. Thankfully, he figured out I wasn't a fan when he found his precious table hidden away in our utility closet. When we moved to our current rental he again tried to use it as a nightstand. That's when I chucked it in the basement and haven't seen it since. I seriously draped a sheet over it so I wouldn't have to look at it when I was changing my laundry.

He refuses to get rid of this thing. You know that scene in the last episode of Friends, when Monica offers to pay the movers to destroy Chandler's dog statue? I would gladly pay for someone to take this thing out of my house. I was really hoping Jax and Jewels would chew on it and rip it to shreds, but even they claimed it was too ugly to chew on. That's saying something!

Exhibit B:

Sweet! An O's hammer. Again, WTF? Somehow I don't see my hubs throwing this bad boy in his tool chest and taking it out to show off to his manly friends. I would hope that his friends would laugh their butts off over the sight of this thing. It's one thing to have a fuzzy animal golf club cover, but a sports themed hammer? I didn't even see that in the tacky NFL Shop commercial (if he ever brings home a Tiffany inspired O's lamp, I don't know what I'll do).

Exhibit C:

Apparently, this is some type of commemorative Coke product from 1995. Yes, that's when Cal broke Lou Gehrig's record. I know this, I've always loved baseball and I watched 2131-feast on tv.

But, growing up in NY, I didn't know that there were all these specialty products that came out to celebrate Cal's achievement. Boy, you can imagine my surprise when I went to open a bottle of soda and my hubs dove across the kitchen to stop me. Again, why are we keeping these soda bottles?




Really, I'm not hateful. I'm not trying to make my hubs purge all of his baseball trinkets. It's just that I wish he would do something with them. If he wanted to display his little Coke bottles somewhere, I'd be okay. The table is a whole different story- it's butt ugly! My hubs keeps these things buried away and never even looks at them. He has a game bat signed by Cal Ripken and it's in the back of his closet. Dude, you've taken over the basement. Make it into your own little mancave and decorate how you will.

I'm just crying foul because the hubs told me to lose my Led Zeppelin poster when we moved in together. Come on, that bad boy was way cooler than that stupid O's table. Right????

(In case you didn't know, today's title is from "The Sandlot." It's one of my favorite movies.)