Oddities at the Cleveland Home & Garden Show

Each winter, I head out to the Cleveland Home & Garden show at the IX Center where -- by the time I leave -- I hate my 100-year-old home, realize I need to make more money to do the REAL decorating and updating I want and...I also come home with some sort of needless purchase. (This year i t was a quart of Ohio maple syrup and a $20 set of 400TC Eqyptian cotton sheets...we'll SEE how they hold up after one round in the washing machine...)

Also, no matter what week it is, it's always bitter cold. This year, however, took the cake. Single digit temperatures. Negative double digit wind chills. A big open parking lot that sits right next to the flat runways of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport...you freeze going in...and going out this year was somewhat like being caught in a major blizzard.

But each year, I wind up having a great time and always go back.

This year I learned about a granite countertop product that has polymer blend in it to make it more durable for spazzes like me. I also learned that while I couldn't live daily in a floating home on Lake Erie, I could probably hack it as a weekend home, if I had the money to buy one.

I also learned that the Home and Garden show if full of interesting things...some useful...some...well...just interesting.

Within 10 minutes of arriving, much to my delight, I saw something...or rather someone...I had spotted out and about before. An honest-to-goodness Abraham Lincoln lookalike. I've seen him before...the very same guy...at Trader Joe's in the spring. Then he was wearing white pants, white bucks and a Hawaiian print shirt. This weekend he was dressed a bit more appropriately for the Arctic weather that blew into town.

I debated taking his picture...the whole invasion of privacy issue...but the fact I've seen him twice in different places in less than six months seemed like a sign to me. Plus, isn't it fitting that his birthday is tomorrow? Or at least Honest Abe's birthday is tomorrow. The picture is blurry, as I'm still improving my paparazzi skilss, but you can see the resemblance.

I continued to wander the aisles, looking for things that truly caught my eye from a home improvement standpoint but also things that piqued my interest from the sublime to the ridiculous. Such as this lovely, unique, large-mouth-bass area rug -- which apparently can double as a stunning wallhanging. The picture does not do it justice. I just stood there looking at it with my mouth open (much like the fish) for quite some time before I decided to snap a photo memorialize such an item. I know people decorate rooms of their home in fishing themes, but isn't this going a LITTLE overboard? I wonder how many orders that vendor got this past week during the show.

I continued my wandering, lusting after several sofas, some lovely Berber carpeting, entire "woman's study" done up in soft vanilla and black with toile furnishings and a number of fabulously stylish kitchen layouts that put my aging cooking area to shame.

Suddenly, I stopped short at the sight of a frightening little woman who appeared to be handing out leaflets at a booth. She was elderly but clad in skin-tight leopard print leggings with a sort of "Sandy" from Grease vibe.

Then I realized, she wasn't alive. She was WAX. A scary, Madame Tussaud's likeness of a sassy old woman. I had to go in for a closer look...and a close-up shot.

The realism is uncanny. Enough to make you stop...and take a picture so you won't forget it.