Panic Rooms

Last weekend, I talked to my friend Barbara. On top of the usual pre-Christmas busyness, she’s dealing with a sick child, Christmas shopping pressures, weather so cold the children can’t play outside and a husband who taste-tests her baking when she’s not looking. “I need a panic room,” Barbara stated emphatically. “But I’d furnish it at MoreWineRacks.com”.

Since a panic room or safe room is designed to protect its occupants from a home invasion, natural disaster or biological and nuclear attacks, I was a little confused. But that’s Barbara’s point. A panic room is a self-sustaining vault independent of the rest of the household, and she thinks every mother should have one. In addition to all the other high tech gadgetry, the safe room should most definitely be equipped with a wine cabinet. She made it clear she wasn’t advocating hitting the bottle big time; she’s just promoting the idea of a room where mothers can go occasionally to chill out when life and motherhood get to be a little too much.

Of course, Barbara’s safe room wouldn’t be complete without a massage chair. It would have to have a lot of bells and whistles. The Human Touch™ Robotic Massage® Chair should fit the bill – lumbar heat and a foot and calf massager included. Made of leather, it would be durable and look good (even if she was the only one who would ever see it).

After a calming glass of wine and a soothing massage, the real business of de-stressing begins. For that, Barbara will need a full size Simmons Slumber Time Starry Sky Plush Mattress and Prepac Manhattan Platform Storage Bed. A comfy bed with someplace to store a soft, warm duvet is paramount to mother-style stress relief.

The downside of Barbara’s idea is that the kids and the husband and the cats will know where to find her. To be truly effective, her panic room would somehow magically change locations, top-secret only-she-need-to-know-basis kind of location, completely protected from any GPS gizmo. At this point, though, Barbara confessed that if she can’t have a panic room stressed-out mother style, she’d settle for a good old-fashioned low-tech padded room instead.