A life lesson

 This post is for those of you amongst my Tribe who tend to procrastinate and then get fired up (almost as if someone had lit a fire under one's nevermind) and tackle a bunch of stuff at once, because you are My People and you'll get this.

Last year, I never hung our heavy drapes in the Old Lady Room. I left up the sheer cream and wine colored curtains because I wanted more light in a room that has a wine colored carpet and greenblack walls and no overhead light. What the builders were thinking when they left no light fixture is beyond me. We've since found wine colored lamp shades for two of the table lamps in addition to the halogen lamp stationed in the corner. It's still darker that we'd like most of the time, hence the light-penetrating curtains.

However, this week it got down into the 30s at night and I definitely noticed a chill on the back of my neck and shoulders whilst I was sitting on the couch which abuts the big windows. I figured I should probably rehang the cream colored, insulated drapes. Sometime. Soonish. Probably.

For some reason, I decided that time would be this morning.

Before I had taken my allergy meds.

Before I vacummed up what used to be spider webs and moths and stinkbugs.

Before I remembered that drapes require curtain hooks, I was already behind the couch, but before that I had said, "move, Couch."

Couch merely snickered at me and said, "yo, move this."

So I attempted a shove. Not a big one, just a "get outta my way so I can hang the dang curtains" shove. 

Couch wasn't having it.

I realized, in fact, the slider thingies were not permanently under Couch, something I should have checked first. 

"Fine. I will get behind you and do this anyway."

Lest you think the other members of my household are awful people who could have lent a hand, they were already working on the sink in the loo which has been dripping and dripping faster and is now drippingdrippingdripping alarmingly fast. We've kept a mixing bowl underneath and have been using the water to keep the water bowls full for the dogs and have been watering plants with it but I know we are losing some down the drain. I didn't want to deter that progress.

So there's me, squashed in the less than a foot of space behind Couch and the window wall. I'd had the foresight to dump all the drapes onto Couch, but they were still all folded into each other from two springs ago when I put them away. I'm twisting to reach and detangle the drapes when I realized, "oh *insert pirate-y talk here*, these need the dang hooks!"

I holler to Damon, who is in the room we call the Library as he has the day off school, and he appears in only his underpants, device in hand, as I try to twist further to gesture to what I need and where they are across the room from me. As he retrieves the plastic cup containing all the hooks (yes, we run a classy establishment around here, I know), they dump out and he's trying to simultaneously stuff them back into the cup whilst watching his video. 

Eventually, he hands me the cup (and had fetched me the vacuum, as well) and I start threading those into the drapes, all the while cursing living in a climate where anyone even needs to have summer and winter curtains and the fact that I was smashing the Count Chocula that I'd had after my Cheerios and that I probably should have pooped first.

I'm reminded of something my Mary Alice had shown me years ago; a sign that started off in huge letters cautioning PLAN AHEAd with a tiny, smashed letter d because they ran out of room. Somedays that is my life.

But the drapes are up! Just in time for it to be in the 70s again most of this week. If anyone needs me I'll be washing the sheers.

The Old Lady Room Makeover

Some of you are scratching your heads and wondering, "what is an Old Lady Room?"

When we were first shown the home we now live in, the front living/sitting room had very much of a parlor appearance. It had these creamy pink/beige/purply/gray walls, one of those very low, long couches, a wing back chair, a rounded, standing radio, and red carpet with roses all over it. And drapes. Oh my, drapes. This is the part where I disclose that I'm still a pushpins-and-sheet-or-light-blanket-or-scarf-over-the-windows kind of girl at heart. I buy curtains on clearance from Big Lots or Bed, Bath & Beyond. These were drapes. With valances! 

And just like that, someone sniggered and the Old Lady Room was born.

You can see the light color of the walls, above, and see how depending on the light the color is all over the place. Normally it didn't have everything shoved into the center of the room, obviously, but spread stuff out in your head and you'll get the idea of how we'd dealt with it.

The Thingz were all to be out of the house the same week thanks to camp and Pap, so what better time to paint than when I didn't have to stop to break up fights or stop to feed anyone or stop to figure out why certain technology was having issues or stop because of anything Thingz-related. 

So I kind of turned things over in my mind and decided I liked a paint square called Greenblack by Sherwin Williams. It had a dark gray look that was kind of smoky and would help the light drapes and painted wood furniture pop while going well with the red furniture and that red, rose covered carpet. Some people scratched their heads again and I'm sure they would have hiding grimaces during the priming process, above, where the room looks really dark and like the first room you'd paint differently if you were moving into a new house.

But, add those crazy thermal drapes back in to cover the darker wood of the windowpanes, get stuff back where it belongs, and let PaPa go crazy with the vacuum and the Murphy's Oil Soap and the Windex and ta da! One spiffy looking room that actually pulled together really well. 

Not bad at all for an Old Lady!  

Huge thanks to camp and Pap (babysitting) and PaPa and Dada (working, cleaning, taking down and rehanging drapes and valances) for all the help!

Come on over to see our New Old Lady Room!