Berdette and Jesse Matteson, 1942.
I know my house is excessive. Even though I call it the bunga-mansion, I’m not sure it really qualifies as a mansion. But it is a very large house (3800 square feet). Clearly when Jesse Matteson built it, he was part of the 1%. The Matteson’s had servants (how many is unknown)- they were housed next door in a house he had built in 1903, on the other side of the tennis court. Finding out about this cleared up a question I had when I first bought the house- why was there no maid’s room or other servant quarters in the house? The Matteson’s were clearly part of the upper social strata in Oakland- their garage-warming party in 1906 was written up in elaborate detail in the society pages of the Oakland Tribune.
I could still use servants- or some kind of paid help. Even after being subdivided, the lot is still 10,000 square feet, and a gardener would be extremely useful. Right now all the fruit trees need to be pruned, but it’s a choice between that and working on the floor in the green bedroom, or finishing the kitchen, or replacing another part of the roof, or replacing the rotted wall at the front of the porch, or fixing the slant of the back porch so that water drains better, or putting stain on the new shingles on the back porch, or epoxying some rafter tails, or fixing the gutters, replacing the non-matching downspouts, painting the ceiling in my bedroom (it’s sky blue- I have woken up every morning for nearly ten years and thought, “I hate that ceiling.”), etc., etc.
I could still use servants- or some kind of paid help. Even after being subdivided, the lot is still 10,000 square feet, and a gardener would be extremely useful. Right now all the fruit trees need to be pruned, but it’s a choice between that and working on the floor in the green bedroom, or finishing the kitchen, or replacing another part of the roof, or replacing the rotted wall at the front of the porch, or fixing the slant of the back porch so that water drains better, or putting stain on the new shingles on the back porch, or epoxying some rafter tails, or fixing the gutters, replacing the non-matching downspouts, painting the ceiling in my bedroom (it’s sky blue- I have woken up every morning for nearly ten years and thought, “I hate that ceiling.”), etc., etc.
A cook would be nice too. I don’t get home from work until after seven, and by the time I fix something to eat it’s often nearly eight. Like all single people my dinners tend to the “chicken breast and a salad” school of cooking. Sometimes I just don’t have the energy and end up eating a bowl of cereal.
I do have a housecleaner. Don’t start throwing mental tomatoes- yes, I am financially desperate, but she only comes for four hours every other week, and it’s the only thing keeping me from killing my housemates, because they are all messy. I’ve become a slob too, more from stress and lack of time, because actually I really can’t stand clutter.
An administrative assistant would be nice, too. Someone to do my Quickbooks data entry, answer my e-mail, do filing, keep track of where the hell I’m supposed to be at any given time- that would be awesome.
The 1% have no idea how easy their lives really are. It makes me furious when some overpaid hedge fundie starts talking about how hard he works and how hard it is to make ends meet on $500,000 a year.
So yeah, as some troll commented on an earlier post, I’m just sitting around in my mansion eating bon-bons and whining about how hard my life is. I don’t even like bon-bons. Hell, I don’t even know what bon-bons are.
I do have a housecleaner. Don’t start throwing mental tomatoes- yes, I am financially desperate, but she only comes for four hours every other week, and it’s the only thing keeping me from killing my housemates, because they are all messy. I’ve become a slob too, more from stress and lack of time, because actually I really can’t stand clutter.
An administrative assistant would be nice, too. Someone to do my Quickbooks data entry, answer my e-mail, do filing, keep track of where the hell I’m supposed to be at any given time- that would be awesome.
The 1% have no idea how easy their lives really are. It makes me furious when some overpaid hedge fundie starts talking about how hard he works and how hard it is to make ends meet on $500,000 a year.
So yeah, as some troll commented on an earlier post, I’m just sitting around in my mansion eating bon-bons and whining about how hard my life is. I don’t even like bon-bons. Hell, I don’t even know what bon-bons are.
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