Joy is fickle. Sometimes I feel it upon arrival, others departure. When I pulled out of the driveway of the old house with a weeks worth of clothes, a pair of stoned house cats, and a corkscrew, I didn’t feel much of anything. There was no fanfare, only the Mister and I pulling away in an anemic two car convoy. I was apprehensive about being trapped in a stick shift with two screaming cats for six hours, but I didn’t depart with any regret about the life I was leaving behind.

When we arrived at our new home, I don’t remember feeling joy or excitement. I was relieved to get the cats out of a moving car, looking forward to a righteous whiz, and thought about the Mexican restaurant for dinner. The moment was ordinary, with the exception of making a dozen trips to unload vehicles. It was the unremarkable nature of the moment that made it feel like home. An intangible feeling not so much of purpose but of expectation. It was a you are home so this what you do moment. I never questioned whether the occasion merited joy or a celebratory champagne toast before sleeping on the floor.

After unpacking, Maggie asked if it felt like home, yet. It always felt like home. It felt whole during the three days before our furniture arrived. It felt whole when there were several tons of boxes stacked in the center of the living room. It felt whole before I picked out paint colors and made met the plumber.

Even with warmth of satiation, there was one refugee aspect of our lives in place. Until last week. The window treatments. I don’t give much thought to dressing myself, so windows are completely out of my league. Most of the windows had a modicum of privacy in place, though some barriers were more tasteless than others. The studio was clad in mini-blinds, there were paper shades tacked up in the master sitting room, the bedroom and bath had naked windows.

We moved paper shades to the bathroom, stretched fitted sheets over the windows in the bedroom, and propped an inflated air mattress in front of the windows in the sitting room. As a woman of more practicality than decoration senses, these solutions seemed perfectly amiable to me. Except for maybe one.

The paper shades in the shower held in place by thumbtacks were not confidence builders. I’ve been suffering from low level shower anxiety. My fears are less serious than this. I have no reservations about nudity, but I don’t consider myself much of an exhibitionist. The Mister likes to watch, and I’m perfectly okay with it because it leads to multiple okays later. The cats however are making me feel a little self-conscious. They don’t just watch. They gawk. How do I really know they aren’t posting photos to flickr, or worse, rating my performance?

This interest in watching me shower happened before our move. First, it was one cat. I felt like a curiosity. Later, the Mister and I contemplated adopting a pair of brothers from the humane society and were discussing the practicality of squaring the cat population. One morning, I stepped out of the shower to two pairs of eyes trained on me, and I concluded I couldn’t handle four cats in the house, it would be too unnerving. WHat if watching me bath simply wasn’t enough? What if they expected me to sing too? Have you dealt with removing cat hair from wet legs? I tried closing the bathroom door, but the damage inflicted by two heavy cats hurling themselves over and over at the door, left one the impression of showering in the center of a demolition site.

Later, I made contact arrangements with our real estate agent regarding house showings. She asked if it was okay to show the house if no one answered the phone, and I replied as long they left a message on the answering machine. I told I didn’t want to be featured in the shower during a surprise house showing. She gave a knowing nod and said, yeah that’s happened a few times. No shit! having spent a week looking at property and observing my own agent’s lackadaisical approach to entering stranger’s homes, I knew there was an EXCELLENT chance. Frankly, I doubt prospective buyers could be coaxed into making an offer after observing three pussies huddled around a shower. I’m afraid the south is too conservative for that to be much of a selling point for anyone older than the frat house set…Sure they continue to fantasize, but denial is often accompanied by a well appointed Gucci handbag fashioned from a married man’s scrotum.

For two months I showered in the bathroom with the flimsy paper shades tacked to the molding knowing that at any moment, Patches could tire of watching me shower through the large picture window, and rip the paper shade down to watch the birds singing beyond the bathroom window. In his exuberance to commune with nature, he would gladly leave me bare-assed for the benefit of my neighbors and the postman.

Thanks to the Mister’s good taste in window treatments, half of my anxiety has been treated. No more worries about exposing myself to the neighbors. The cats have insisted that the shower show must go on, so look for tickets at a box office near you.