I like befores and afters. Cable facilitated this for me with an array of shows: Clean House, While You Were Out, Mission Organization, Celebrity Fit Club even Animal Precinct.

I enjoy bringing calm to chaos and so it isn't surprising that a healed and adopted critter brought back from the dead makes me misty.

I like how clean a place can look after the clutter has been organized, sold or given away. I've only recently experienced the satisfaction of clearing the files, bad photos, dated correspondence, old receipts, tight clothes with tags on them, shoes that pinch, birthday and xmas cards sans dates, unidentifiable phone numbers on pieces of paper, lipsticks, dry nail polishes, perfumes devoid of their fragrance, pens that won't write, articles I won't read, recipes never attempted, letters I never sent, bills from collecters I collected, transit maps, brochures, newsletters, old horoscopes and widowed socks. I felt sorry for some of my stuff and I thought it was my job to keep my nephew's left baby shoe or the dog from an old Monopoly game or Woody's plastic cowboy hat, or the ugly earrings I never really liked gifted to me by some well intentioned friends. I was supposed to keep the mini mug from Miami with my name on it. I was wrong.

I like that a clutter free space is about the potential and the possibilities of great things yet to come. Pristine walls and reupholstered Salvation Army finds and the ubiquitious plywood armoire provide the calm.
I like quick solutions to bad taste and decorating faux pas.

I don't feel the same about medical makeovers. I turn away at rhinoplasty and implants and find lipo not as heartwarming. I worked for Jenny Jones at the height of her implant confessionals and spoke to a lot of women with issues about their breast imperfections. A woman who had her implants removed was lamenting the fact that one was still slightly larger than the other. It seemed to me that it was about narcissim and self esteem. The remedy requiring a sharper instrument cutting deeper and to an emotional core. I was mesmerized as a friend of mine once pinched all the parts of her body that had to go. Now as someone whose likeness was captured by Lucien Freud in a Met retrospective years ago, there are parts of me that have to go as well. Lucien painted another fat girl feeling the same as me but brave enough to lie still and vulnerable for everyone to see.

I like befores and afters and my current fascination is the one that features me.

Today I'll exercise, tomorrow I won't.

I also like watching female judges dole out justice on national TV.