Dollhouse

I miss my dollhouse. Well … not mine exactly – Jessie’s. At least that is what I told myself when I bought it. I love miniatures. Don’t know why, just do – so dollhouses – yeah, I like them.

This Playmobil dollhouse we kept on a small table in the kitchen downstairs in our house in Sugar Land. Come to find out – Jessie is not all that interested in dollhouses. So I set it up and there it sat except on a rare occasion when Jessie would play with it. Jessie’s ‘playing with it’ basically involved making it look like either an earthquake had hit, or Ryan’s room.

Back then were the years that I was sick – really sick. In the hospital from dehydration sick or giving myself IV antibiotics for Lyme Disease sick. Housekeeping was not in the top ten things I wanted to do or could do during that time, but my OCD caused me to go nuts that the house was not clean. So I came up with a truce – I would keep the dollhouse clean. On a really bad day, if that was all I could do – it was enough. Looking back, I think I needed something that I could control and keep in order when everything else was spiraling out of control.

It also had its perks: Someone calls, asks what I am doing: ‘Cleaning the house’. Someone calls to ask me to do something I don’t want to do: ‘Sorry, I have to clean the house’. It was an inside joke between me and Ryan. Every now and then I would tell Ryan to clean the house. And he would. That is better than when I asked him to clean his room.

Since it had been in the kitchen in Sugar Land, I put it in the kitchen in Norway. I was healthier in Norway, so the house cleaning part was not needed all that much, but not to waste a good toy – Ryan and I would set up ‘still life’s’.

I like reading murder mysteries so it was not uncommon to see that the maid had taken an axe to the missus, or a Lizzie Borden recreation. We have a crate full of weapons – thanks to the cowboy and Indian stagecoach set. One Christmas was especially stressful and Santa sort of lost it. He was on the roof with a shotgun and a revolver.

It was always fun to walk by and see what Ryan had set up – it was not always murder and mayhem, but we had the hatchets, knives and guns so … why not? Just wish we had some itty bitty crime scene tape.


We did not put the dollhouse in our kitchen here, it is up in my craft room. No one ever just happens to walk by my craft room, so not as much fun. Although I had not taken down deranged Santa and my sister Marci, and her partner Patti, were visiting. I was using the craft room as a guest room back then and Patti very calmly asked in her calm doctor voice: “Lori, why is Santa holding a shotgun and pointing a revolver at Ruldolph?” Ooops, I had forgotten. Told her that Santa had been a wee bit stressed at Christmas. She seemed fine with that. At least, she was not recommending therapy or writing me out any prescriptions because of it….

So … I miss it. No husband flirting with the maid (and then the aftermath - jealous wife). No Nanny pulling a gun on the kids (Ryan did that, not me), No decorating for Christmas (the CUTEST little pine tree), no ‘whodunit’s’, no chalk outlines, no deranged Santa, no invasion of Indians, no horses in the house …. sigh.


Guess I will have to grow up after all….