Probably is not a word I like to hear when I'm talking about our chances of recouping a huge investment.

In my experience, Cupid's arrows rarely strike two people with the same definition of cleanliness. One partner usually feels like he or she is being asked to live in a furniture exhibit in the British Museum. The other partner remains convinced that he or she is forced to contend with the human version of Hurricane Gilbert.

My husband says that I'm afraid of heights, but that's not true. What I'm afraid of is falling.

Call me an alarmist, but there are certain words I don't like to hear together: cheap fireplace, discount brakes, cut-rate surgery.

Truth is funnier than most things you can make up.

At the beginning of a remodel, money is everything, but as you go along, it becomes secondary to the vision. You can't have the house looking like a glorious jewel and leave the cracked linoleum or the icky light fixture, so you spend and spend and spend. Then one day it suddenly occurs to you that all that play money you've been throwing around is real - and it's in someone else's bank account.

I have never enjoyed an experience that begins at five A.M.