Valances don't make houses ugly, people do.

Ryan says I'm being unkind and narrow minded for complaining about awful "window treatments" in all the houses we're looking to buy in Ithaca.

"They were from a different era, Alice."

"Yeah? My parents don't have awful window treatments."

"Your parents windows couldn't have those kind of curtains on their windows."

"But if they could, they wouldn't."

Then I remembered the awful artwork that decorated my parents house when we moved into it, all those years ago. It took months, perhaps years, for the awful 80's prints to get removed from the wall space which they occupied, banished into the garage and finally into a garage sale and out of the house forever.

"But I would never do that. I'd take that stuff down the day we moved in."

He muttered something in Latin about not faulting people with regards to their personal taste. I retorted with something in English about pots calling kettles black.

I wanted to say something about not faulting the people but instead faulting the treatments and then I realised that no, I really was holding it against them for having such ugly floral curtains.

Valances don't make houses ugly, people do.