Hurricane Mary Returns
Decorating Diva Back From Exile

The sighting of Hurricane Mary on radar screens at the National Decorating Center (NDC) in Santa Barbara, California sparked celebrations throughout the nation. Hurricane Mary or "Hurri" as she’s known to her many friends disappeared right after putting the Thanksgiving leftovers away and mopping her Mannington floor. The new year came and went and by February, iFLOOR was inundated with e-mails from Hurricane’s fans. Had she been committed to a home for hopeless decorators? Was she in training for "Celebrity Survivor, the Back Bedroom?" Had she finally hit her unfinished ceiling and blasted into the cosmos? Where in the world was Hurricane Mary?

A group of Kansas City decorators offered to form a posse to find Hurricane. Home decorators as far away as Germany, China and Australia wrote to say how much they missed Hurricane Mary’s wisdom and inspiration. Fans suffered symptoms of Hurricane Mary withdrawal (inability to look at paint and wallpaper samples without weeping, troubling choosing floor coverings, an irrational desire to buy at full price).

In March, a news bulletin arrived at the executive offices of iFLOOR. Hurricane Mary had been spotted circling the Atlanta airport, trying to land at the Gift Show. The excitement among staffers reached fever pitch. Surely, this was a good sign– if Hurricane was shopping for home accessories she’d be back in full force. iFLOOR president and CEO Steve Simonson cautioned against too much optimism: "She may not be ready, folks. We need to give her space. We don’t want her to be floored."

Then, one day in May during "Pamper your Pergo" week to be exact, Hurricane Mary emerged from exile.
We caught up with her in a design store where she was attempting to pick out upholstery fabric and asked about her absence. "It’s as if my life was stuck permanently in stage three of Steve’s Stages of Floor Shopping–when he talks about frustration. Profound questions about life, about decorating, about the meaning of floors filled my head. Even though I practiced feng shui, I was still consumed with worry about our unfinished kitchen ceiling, the hideous hot-pink bathroom cabinets, the missing moldings, the carpet chaos that threatens to engulf me and my husband, the home remodelers from hell."

"I also felt that my contributions were meaningless," Hurri continued. My struggles with a temperamental French door, the heartbreak of owning a tiny house, the perils of painting, the angst of a flooded kitchen, had gotten stale."

"There was Steve with his helpful, informative articles. He was making a difference in people’s lives while I felt like a useless end table of a person, an ugly garage sale vase."

"Then something happened to change my entire outlook, to bring me out of my slump. My secretary placed two e-mails on my desk. I know them both by heart. The first one read:

"My life was a mess. The house was in need of cleaning and my mind in a funk. Then I found Hurricane Mary on iFLOOR, and all my problems seemed so small. Here was a woman with so many more problems than I, dealing with them so much more creatively than I. No longer could I feel sorry for myself nor have the slightest excuse for not cleaning up my life.

Her bright shining example of smiling through the hazards of kitchen floor selection, her brilliant instruction on Feng Shui and its benefits and above all her glorious good humor in the face of all her travails shamed me into completely reorganizing the world around me. I'm even shopping for French doors, although I live in a second floor apartment."

And this one from a lady in Seattle: "You have my life. I laughed so much at your delightful article on Feng Shui. I, too, am in a small house, trying to find a way to enlarge it. I dream of finding doors that I hadn't noticed, and when I open them they open into big bedrooms with master baths. I also have a few bricks in the backyard and I think of what to do with them, could they be used for the addition we will never be able to afford to do. Your cosmic twin, Sally."

"I realized," Hurri said, a smile lighting her face, "that I must never again fail my loyal readers. I have a responsibility to them. While there’s still breath left in my body no one shall suffer alone the slings and arrows of outrageous decorating!"

Madcap Mary Mendoza, formerly known as Hurricane Mary, lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, son, three cats and 200,000 Sunset magazines.