Warning: Watching too much Home & Garden Television may be hazardous to your emotional wellbeing. Sure, the cable station gives us fascinating insights into how people pick real estate and how one can parlay a quick-and-dirty makeover of one's house into big bucks on the resale market. But have you ever noticed that when someone transforms their ugly basement recreation room into a "Mid-Century Modern" showplace for under $1,000 on Design on a Dime, the cost of labor is never included? The assumption is that we all should be as adept as HGTV's consultants at doing plumbing or electrical work and determining which interior walls support our house and which ones can be smashed at will with a sledgehammer.

John gets ticked off every time a jovial host runs down the list of a project's final costs: "four gallons of paint, varnish and faux finishing compound, $14; two lamps, candles, artwork and decorative accessories, $38…"

"Where do you people shop?" he screams at the screen. "You can hardly buy one can of paint for $14, much less four and the brushes to apply it."

"How about an entire roomful of art and accessories for under 50 bucks?" I chime in.

"You can't get a velvet-Elvis painting at a gas station for that anymore."

One of the insidious things about HGTV is how it makes us feel inadequate about our abilities to be caregivers to our homes. We feel that we are failures if we cannot redesign, reconstruct and refurbish them in less time and for less money than many of us spend on a haircut.

Even worse, the cable channel can make us unhappy about where we live—and I don't mean the relative aesthetics of Maui versus Memphis. Having overdosed on real-estate and redesign shows, I have been brainwashed into disillusionment with the house John and I both adored when we moved into it a half dozen years ago. We should feel blessed to own a vintage "craftsman" home, a style in high demand all over the country, according to HGTV's sages. However, the last time our place was remodeled was way back in the late 1990s, so now our kitchen and master bath are what many an HGTV makeover candidate or home purchaser would describe as seriously "outdated." We have no travertine tile, no granite countertops, no sleek black appliances. In fact, our kitchen is almost entirely white—and most everyone who comes on HGTV sticks their noses up at white.

We do have a big refrigerator with a side-by-side freezer—it was considered high-tech a few short years ago—but it's not stainless steel, and that's a no-no in the world of HGTV. Our only consolation is that we can still adhere funny magnets to our fridge door unlike the sorry folks with stainless. We also lack a convection oven, but then again we don't really understand how owning one would improve our culinary skills. Still, a professional chef's stove or a convection oven can add thousands to a home's resale value, say the HGTV authorities, so I want one even though John does all the cooking and he could care less.

I also find myself longing for a shower with a dozen carefully arranged spray nozzles, for a "bonus room"—perhaps we could emulate Tori Spelling and use it as a gift-wrapping room—and for a home cinema with such high definition and a screen so wide that it would surely make all the shows we watch on HGTV much more rewarding.

Speaking of popular architectural design, we just returned from a visit to the capital of "Mid-Century Modern," Palm Springs, California. We met up there with an old friend from our Rehoboth years, Jeff, and his partner Tim (they now live in Oregon), and we all were hoping for a week of fun in the warm California sun. Well, sunny it was—but, just our luck—we hit the worst cold snap in years, including a hard freeze the evening of our arrival, accompanied by stiff Santa Ana winds of up to 70 miles per hour. For guys who have become accustomed to mild and moist Florida winters, it was quite a jolt.

Palm Springs is the kind of place where you don't need a towel when you step out of the shower. Just stand in place for 15 seconds and your body is completely dry. Instead of toweling off, we found ourselves using the time to apply eye drops, nose spray, lip balm and layer upon layer of moisturizer. The air was so dry in the desert that even my cheeks were chapped—and I don't mean only my face.

Not that we didn't have fun in Palm Springs. It may be the gayest town in America, with a year-round population estimated at between 35 and 50 percent gay (and even a higher percentage of gay tourists). The neighborhood just west of downtown is so queer that it is affectionately called the "Fruit Loop," a place where locals come to cruise and out-of-towners come to pamper themselves at a dozen or more world-class playground resorts.

Some are Mid-Century Modern in design and decor; others are old-fashioned Spanish villas. Almost all have dramatic waterfalls, adventurous pool settings—and extraordinary service. We stayed at The INNdulge, and it was delightful. Manager Joseph and staff hosted a huge poolside breakfast every morning, wine parties at dusk (yes, we were all bundled in jackets), and complimentary margaritas poolside on the weekend. One of the things I liked best about our resort—and several others we visited in Palm Springs—was their age inclusiveness. Young guys just out of college mingled comfortably with men twice and thrice their ages.

At the town's currently most popular dance bar, the tropically themed Toucan's, young hip-hop attired guys strutted alongside well manicured local politicians (including Palm Springs' gay mayor), nationally known clothing designers, filmmakers and other mature professional men. What's more, about half the partiers were lesbians, many of them young, pretty and chicly attired. Of course, there were bears and bull dykes, too. The place was such a celebration of the diversity of gay humanity that I was ready for the crowd to break out in a chorus of Nancy Sinatra's song "Another Gay Sunshine Day" from the ribald, slapstick film "Another Gay Movie."

Nancy Sinatra still has roots in Palm Springs—she has her own star on the local Walk of Fame—and a favorite pastime of visitors (like us) is hunting for the homes of old-time movie stars. We saw Liberace's house and the villa of Clark Gable, now a trendy restaurant. Some friends of Jeff's from San Diego rented a cozy little bungalow that Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz used to stay in when they frequented Palm Springs in the 1950s. According to the bungalow's current owners, little Rickie took his first steps in the living room there. Following an afternoon of margarita-gulping at a local restaurant, one member of our party, in trying to claw her way across the living room, was as unbalanced on her feet as Lucy's son must have been trying to negotiate the same spot a half century earlier.

The Arnaz-Ball apartment still boasts a small kitchen that, with the exception of a newer model gas range, looks like it could have been transported directly from the set of I Love Lucy. With laminate countertops, original cupboards, and pristine white walls and accents, this charming bit of America enchanted us all.

One thing that makes me feel better about John's and my dated kitchen back home is that trends change quickly and, in a few years, many of the people who are running around ripping out their vintage fixtures in favor of black granite and stainless steel will be appalled at how passé their kitchens look: "Yech; who wants so much dark, dreary heaviness," they will tell the host of an HGTV show. "We're sick to death of looking at marble swirls in our counters. We want a do-over in pastels or solid white—and maybe some classic Formica® and linoleum."