breathe

I've really been making a huge effort the last year and a half to love what I have. Isn't that douchey? That I have to make an effort rather than just accept my life as it is?

I took a look around my house a couple years ago and I saw so much junk. Not that I had a junky house, but there was a lot in there that I haven't used in forever, that I probably never would use, and stuff I didn't even know what it was for. AV wires and USB plugs and screws and such mostly. All taking up valuable inches in my drawers.

Plus, I've been out of my mother's house for 15 years. Do you know how much crap 15 years brings? A lot. Trust me.

So I purged. I wouldn't be surprised if I got rid of a ton of stuff. Literally. Two thousand pounds removed from my house. Including the bricks out in the yard, but whatever. The bricks had to go. Fifteen years sneaks up on a girl and no one should be living in 1994 this far into the two thousands so I tossed everything that was outdated and worn and useless to me.

And now I'm happier. There is hardly any clutter anywhere and I love it. I bought new towels and new pots and new food storage containers and I'm like a pig in mud. Rolling around and happy as anything when I'm at home.

For the most part. Of course. No one rolls around 100% of the time. That's crazy and creepy.

Everything I have is functional. Almost. My can opener crapped out last night. My coffee pot is failing miserably at making anything that doesn't taste like tar. My silverware doesn't really get sparkley clean anymore, but I don't think the haze is hazardous. Yet.
I still have four sets of dishes kicking around.
I have this weird romantic vision of me giving Jake the plates I picked out for my wedding registry when he goes away to college, but let's face it. They are Totally Nineties. They are stoneware with purple, teal, and green rings around them. They live in my basement for a reason.
He might get beat up with these dishes and his dates might think he's a pussy, plus I'm hoping that I have the flow to buy the kid a new set of plates on his way out my door. If I can, I will consider myself successful.
Like I've done better than my parents did before me.
See now, we was so poor I hadsta gotten my college dishes for free from a dead lady. They were Totally Seventies and I up and took them right out of her cabinets. They were stonewear with orange and yellow and brown flowers on them. And I carried them uphill from her house to mine. In the snow.

I've taken issue with my decade-old silverware. Is it important to me to provide consistency and reliability in Jake's life with the spoons? Is it bad that I sought stability in flatware as a child? That I looked to forks to reassure me that no matter what happens, the True Rose Oneida is there?
Or should I pass it along to someone in need and get something prettier? Something that says "I'm almost 33 dammit, look at my knife! Don't you wish you had this knife? Maybe someday, if you work hard enough and save your dollars and be good you can be happy buttering your bread at home and you don't have to come to me for the glory and wonder of it all." or do I plug along with my trusty Pfaltzgraff because at the end of the day, who the eff gives an eff?

My life is hard, can't you tell?
This is seriously my biggest problem right now.

I used to want a new house, but I really like my house. Today. I like how it is almost 150 years old and the walls are still standing just as strong as ever.
I want to see Jake run down the stairs at 13 years old, completely confident of his steps unlike he is at 3. I will let him jump off the third step from the bottom in seven years. The second one when he is 5.
I want to watch him all of a sudden reach the sink one day, touch the top of the door frame on his way into his room, take a shower that I don't have to be a part of. I like to watch his head peek out the windows, higher and higher every month.
Some day I will let him hang out on the deck all by himself. The boy is a climber and two stories is a long way to fall so it's off limits and he does not like it one bit. He doesn't like that a part of his house is only for grownups.

I want to see what I can do with that kitchen.
What my bathroom would look like if I reglazed my 1940s iron tub that sounds cuter than it is and what a re-grout would do to the mint and black subway tile that climbs all four walls. And the leaf and carbon marble floor can probably take a shining too. I like that the tiles don't exactly match.
I have a first floor laundry room. No icky pantless 7am basement trips for me, thank you.
I could do without the drop ceiling in my bedroom. Maybe I'll get to that in 2010. Maybe I'll peel away the paneling and see if I have exposed brick under there like my neighbors do. You can get lots of ideas for your house by looking in other people's windows.
My neighbors are okay.
Parking is my biggest problem, but it's everyone's problem down that way. On the flip side, I don't have to shovel in the winter or drive to get anything I need, aren't you jealous? I've never mown a lawn and I don't plan on starting. My "yard work" is a joke. It takes 15 minutes every two weeks.
My property value isn't dropping. My house is worth more now than when I bought it, at the height of the National House Buying Festival we all had a few years ago. That's not so bad, is it?

Any time I feel content, I am afraid that fate will frown on me in a such a bizarre way that I just may make the 6 o'clock news. Whenever I have a moment of serenity and complete clarity, I'm afraid someone will shoot me in the back of the head like what happened to the dad in American Beauty.
That's also why I don't make out with high school girls.