Inside the Malibu Dream House

Last night, after completely forgetting for the third night in a row about soccer at Grant Park, my dad and I went for a drive to Home Depot. (Personally, I think this is my brain's way of sabotaging any attempt of mine to exercise, or in particular run--especially after a recent stunning victory in that department). Now Home Depot is not, let's say, a particular favourite of mine. Actually, I don't think I've ever been inside one, except perhaps as a kid when my memory was even less functional than it is now. I pictured Wall-Mart but grungier. Instead, although still fluorescent-lit and grey, it was like I stepped into a giant dollhouse. It was all very surreal. Huge walls with shiny silver things streching up until they lost all detail. Washers and dryers in big bunches. We had to look at tubs, and they had individual little "bathrooms" set up like sets for a movie, with only two walls, in all different decorating tastes. French countryside? Clean and simple? Deep red walls with a jetted whirpool? there was even one where the walls looked like the outside of a stone cathedral, the medieval feel even stronger because the top of the shower door was level with my head, which is only five and a half feet.
Then the tubs in stock were displayed vertically, set in the wall, three or four high. Like an eagle's eye view of cards laid on a table. Holy crap. Clever and dwarfing.
The little bathroom set-ups made me feel like Barbie in a seriously screwed-up Malibu Dream House. Further on there were the showers, also displayed and built vertically on top of each other. I could just imagine what it would be like to have the run of the place after closing time. Screw sneaking into Wall-Mart--Home Depot was the place to be! You could climb up the showers and tubs one by one until you could be comfortably nestled into a shiny, closed-off niche twenty feet off the ground, survey your kingdom and hopefully be cocooned with someone that makes you feel warm and fuzzy.