Soooo much better

The Spud comes home tomorrow and by working up until yesterday I was able to meet my living room reno deadline.  Sort of.

I did run out of time and energy to finish the window trim and a little bit of baseboard trim, and there are a few touch ups needed.  But I can live with that a while because in every way the living room looks sooo much better and like home.

Unfortunately, I am not as pleased with the paint color as I thought I’d be.  I really went round and round with color swatches.  I taped them up to the wall in various areas of the living room trying to decide which I liked better.  I wanted something grey with a subtle warm green tone hoping it would downplay the blue tones in the drapes.  In dim natural light it is fine and picks up the greyish tones in the drapes like I wanted.  Unfortunately the lighting mostly makes it look greyish mint green and I feel that color clashes with the drapes.

Strangely enough, the color gives me the impression of being old and tired instead of fresh and chic.   Perhaps because, I have recently realized, the color is very much the same color as the area rug I had for many years until the death of my landlady and my years of pseudo homelessness.  As much as I didn’t want to go with tones of blue in my living room and dining room, looking at this new paint color actually makes me wish my walls were more of a color match to the drapes.

Oh, man, I hate it when I like things that go against the plan.  But this is a fresh “new” house and a fresh “new” phase in my life.  Much of the furniture is new, and I think maybe it is good to go down a different color palette route.  So I’m going to live with it a while and see if it grows on me, but I’m pretty sure eventually I’ll want to change it.  While that distresses the penny pincher in me, at least I only will need one gallon and re-painting the wall only will not take long.

Silly Janie.  This is where I have to laugh at myself.  Even though I am not thrilled with the color of the walls, I love the wallpaper texture.  I makes the room feel so much more elegant, hiding the flaws in the wall and the painted cheap wood paneling.  I finally dug out my art and hung the prints up in the living room and dining room, and it gives the house such a feeling of homey-ness and completion.  I do like it a lot over all.

So, without further a-do, here’s photos:

BEFORE

 

AFTER

An interesting series of thoughts

So yesterday, I suddenly felt like running.  And not just a little trot to look like you are hurrying, but a full out urge to pump those stumpy little legs of mine as hard as I could.

It got me thinking.  Although it might sound scary, I actually do a lot of thinking.  Too much thinking, I’m sure, because it’s always rather fruitless thoughts that leave me worried, vexed or dissatisfied.  Mostly I’m always thinking how to manage on a limited budget, how to get everything done before I’m exhausted, or how to make it through the tedium of a job that makes me very miserable.  These are seldom lines of thought that lead to anything uplifting.

But in the past few days I’ve started applying for new jobs and ways to make it work to go back to school for my graduate degree.  I think, perhaps, all those annoying applications are making me feel a little better about myself and all the things I have done, have learned and can do.  Perhaps it’s good therapy.  Because for the last year and a half I’ve been trying to convince myself to be grateful for a job that is respectable but yet is contrary to every fiber of my being.

I like to make people happy, I like to nurture things and make everything feel good.  But my professional life revolves around seeing how much pain innocent little mice can withstand and then eventually putting them down and harvesting their organs for molecular assays.  It’s ghoulish, soul crushing work for me.  And, the longer I am here the less respect I have for myself and the work our lab does because, I think, it goes against my basic instincts.

Don’t get me wrong, I logically know that the sacrifice is going to help better understand how to treat people with chronic pain and diabetes.  But, as valuable as it is, it is really, really hard for me to do and not think about how it must feel to be a lab mouse.

Anyway, I also have begun to have some other thoughts about my boss, which I am getting more concerned about.  Normally I read people really well within a short period of time, but there are a few personality types that trick me.  I think hers is a passive aggressive type that has been messing with my brain, and causing me to lose confidence in myself and my perceptions.  Today was the light bulb day, when I finally accepted the suspicions which have been nagging at me.  A little thing happened which caused the doubt to dissipate.

I could still be losing my mind, but at least I once again am trusting myself.  I haven’t trusted myself in about 4 months.  I don’t know why I lost it initially, but, I do suddenly feel a sense of clarity I haven’t known in all that time.

So, while I still don’t know exactly how I’m going to effect a change in my circumstances, I now feel totally at peace with myself and confident that forging ahead in a new direction is the right thing and the necessary thing to do.

 

What alien snatched my brain?

So, a very weird thing happened a little while ago.

I was walking down a long empty hall with a slight ramp.  Suddenly, I had this giddy urge to run as hard as I could.

I NEVER have the urge to run.

An alien body snatcher must have stolen the real me.

Maybe I missed my calling

Perhaps I should have been an interior designer.  I really do love shopping for paint and wallpaper and furniture.

I don’t particularly like painting, hanging wallpaper and paying for furniture, but hell, if you’re an interior designer that’s what lackeys and clients are for, right?

Unfortunately, I’m my own interior designer, lackey and client.

I have spent the last several weeks chipping away at the living room reno.  I am getting close to being done.  The wallpaper went up this weekend.  It took waaaaaay longer than I anticipated and there was a lot more waste trying to match the pattern than I expected, so that was a little bit frustrating.  But, man.  I am getting really excited.  It is looking soooo awesome.

My house was built in 1919 and keeps whispering “Art Nouveau” to me.  Any design purists out there will probably roll over in their graves as I say this, but I have a hard time distinguishing the difference between art nouveau and art deco (which I guess came a little later than art nouveau and is more in keeping with the era my house was built), and both styles are really appealing to me lately.  So, I’m sort of mish-mashing them together and picking some things to give a nod to both design eras.

Case in point.  My wallpaper is an anaglypta style with a relief pattern very reminiscent of the swirls and lines of art nouveau/art deco.  I have picked out a semi-gloss, smokey grey-green to paint over it, which I see in a lot of period appropriate designs and I think will tie together nicely with my funny aquamarine/silver velvet drapes, grey patterned rugs and green-grey upholstered furniture.  I wanted to buy these really cool light switch and outlet covers that screamed art deco, but to outfit the house, which doesn’t really have all that many, would have cost several hundred dollars.  Eeek!  So, plain white it is.

Barring any unforeseen circumstances I think I will be finished by next Sunday.  The Spud returns for the summer on May 26, and I set myself the challenge to have the living room done before she comes.  So, nothing like finishing in the 11th hour.