When Bloggers Collide

It happens to us all sooner or later. Your spend the afternoon with your family cleaning the garage, or planting flowers, or painting the porch, and someone says to the others, "I'm making a Home Depot run. Wanna go?"

And you know that you shouldn't leave the house, because you know you look a fright. But why bother to change out of your gardening clothes or put in your contact lenses or even, for gosh sake's, brush your hair, when you know you'll be out and back in no time at all and back to work on the house.

And really, who else is going to be at The Home Depot on a Friday night?

Other house bloggers, that's who.

Mom and I had pretty much dropped whatever it was we had been working on and jumped in the car "as is" to drive on over to the local Home Depot. She was in search of better lawn chairs and I wanted to get a weed wacker, because I was so coveting the one Sparkle Plenty had just bought.

And while walking past the checkout lanes on my way to grab a shopping cart for the brick-red plastic Adirondack chairs Mom found ($9.95 each), I saw a couple buying concrete who looked kinda familiar.

Naw, it couldn't be, could it?

I looked down at my mismatched socks (at least they were both green), remembered that I still had on my frumpy glasses, contemplated the fact that I was actually wearing pajama bottoms in public, and thought oh, what the heck.

"Um, Jocelyn?"


The couple turned around and yep, I was right. It was Jocelyn and her husband Steve from Chicago Two-Flat. Small world, indeed, eh? I read their blog all the time. They have a two-flat in Rogers Park, not too far away from The Box House, and serve as my general inspiration for our own two-flat. We had never met before, but I had corresponded with Jocelyn a few times, and she had given me some good advice about renters.

We chatted for a few minutes, and I found them as nice and genuine as they seem on their blog, and we joked about where else would home restorers be on a Friday night but the local home improvement store. Jocelyn had mentioned before that we should have a get together for Chicago-area house bloggers. I love that idea. It would be a great way to meet other like-minded people, because most of my family and friends think we're crazy for taking on the renovation of an 82-year-old building. I hope that happens.

So after a few minutes, I waved good-bye to Jocelyn and Steve, and made my way back to the chair section to tell Mom of my encounter, feeling a little bad that she hadn't been with me to meet them, too. And when we got back to The Box House, I told Ted of the meeting, and how I would not leave the house again without properly combing my hair and making sure I had, at the very least, washed off all the garden dirt first.

"Um, Joanne, isn't that yellow porch paint in your hair?" he asked me.

I looked in the mirror and, *gasp*, a big ol' glob of yellow paint was in my hair.

Oh, good grief.