I guess the fact that when I finally was arsed to put some clothes on, they were sweatpants, sealed my fate. I vacuumed, vacuumed, vacuumed (and will vacuum some more) but I did not clean both bathrooms. My main activity today was putting up the new curtains and rods and being very, very disgruntled.
Let's talk about the curtain rods first. Can I just say, my future contractor husband cannot appear in my life soon enough, because all this home improvement bullshit is wearing me down and I haven't even done anything majorly tricky yet. Standing on a rickety stepstool with the cordless drill because, even though the ladder is upstairs, it's heavy and the amount of heavy furniture I would have had to move in order to get it close enough to the window made risking my life a more attractive alternative, and realizing that someone who knew what they were doing would have had those brackets securely installed in 45 seconds, not the 45 minutes and copious cursing it took me, really made me want a non-useless man around. Or my mom. Because she was good at that stuff. Unfortunately, the ghost of my mother materializing to give me guidance has about the same odds as me snagging a husband.
Anyway, I did get them up without breaking anything (bones, windows, what have you.) Then I got out the new steamer to try to dewrinkle the drapes. Well. You know the saying about you get what you pay for? I bought a $20 "Sharper Image" steamer at Bed Bath and Beyond, and it leaks out the bottom. Little drops of scalding hot water. It's a good thing I was wearing those sweatpants, huh? Though I'm not sure I don't have any minor burns. Gah. Fucking piece of crap. And its dewrinkling power is...not fantastic. Those drapes, to be fair, were really seriously creased from being in their packaging, though, so maybe even a non-piece-of-crap steamer would have been sorely tested. Oh! And the drapes? The little metal grommets on them gave me metal splinters when I was threading them on the curtain rods. Again, get what you pay for. I have the cheap Pottery Barn knockoffs from the Tazhay, made in China. I'm sure the expensive real Pottery Barn ones are made in, like, Sri Lanka and don't require an updated tetanus shot to hang. Oh! And the architecture school dropout who apparently built this house? Who the hell puts all the electrical outlets and in-floor heating/cooling vents directly under the windows? Do you think that would, I dunno, make having your drapes hang right a problem?
But, enough about that. Let's discuss how Marcy's acupuncture has apparently worn off. I was feeling much less anxious and generally in a better mood in the first few days afterwards. Whether that was due to the general relaxing effect of the treatment or whether it did affect my hormones (because I'm fairly convinced that the past six months of hugely irregular periods along with the mood swings have got to be the beginnings of perimenopause) or whether it was all a placebo, I dunno. But I was able to think about some stuff that was objectively upsetting in a dispassionate kind of way and not, y'know, get too wound up about it. Today, however? Back to the shitty shitty mood. Dwelling on things. Threw a major hissy fit at D and my dad and refused to cook dinner when there was some dissension about what I was going to make. (In fact, I stuck the steak I was gonna cook tomorrow in the freezer and told them I'm not cooking all week, too freaking bad.)
I can't wait till Wednesday to go get my chi adjusted again.
So, here's some pictures. Can you see how creased the drapes still are?
This, by the way, is what is going to be my new guest room/dressing room. Or, as L and I call it, the "L_____ M_____ Memorial Bed and Breakfast Wing of 9 F______ Drive." Because we're morons. And I told her I was doing the room over just for her. And she likes bed and breakfasts. And I now refuse to stay in any when she and I go away anywhere because making chitchat with the owners over morning coffee is one of Dante's circles of hell, I'm convinced. This bedding is more cream and less white in real life. It looks kinda crappy in this picture, but in person it's nice.
Closeup of some more of my vaguely disturbing art. And wrinkled drapes.
And just because someone kindly gave me their excess Xmas lights and I said I was going to take a picture of what I did with them:
That's it. I'm done.
xoxo
5 comments:
I know what you need for Christmas...
A better digital camera, cause from the photos you posted, I can't tell the drapes are creased at all. :-)
As for your enmity towards bed-and-breakfasts: I now refuse to stay in any when she and I go away anywhere because making chitchat with the owners over morning coffee is one of Dante's circles of hell...
I couldn't agree more. Why people voluntarily subject themselves to forced smalltalk with strangers you have nothing in common with (especially if you're not very WASP-y) other than they took your money for a not so luxurious hotel room is beyond me.
On the other hand, I've found those places that call themselves "guesthouses" often have most of the advantages of bed and breakfasts (low prices, nice people working/owning it, non-motel furnishings, located near stuff you want to see, etc.) without having to deal with the unpleasant pleasantries that so often accompany a bed-and-breakfast (which I refuse to stay in, too).
It's not my camera that's at fault; it's your y chromosome. :-) Men are much more...accepting...of wrinkled fabric, by and large. I wish I could take a picture with the flash that didn't wash all the color out, though. Even trying to fix it on the computer still doesn't make it look how it looks in real life. I'm sure *that's* a function of my crappy antiquated camera.
As for B&Bs, L loves the "quaint" decor and she actually enjoys the chitchat with somebody's Aunt Millie from Duluth. She's a sociable person. She thinks people are interesting. I only think people are interesting when observed from a removed distance, like Jane Goodell watching the chimps from the bushes. And I can do without quaint decor if it means I don't have to go down the hall to take a shower or pee.
In short, no B&Bs!
It's all in the merchandising. If you were in NYC, say in Alphabet City or the Village, and you had to climb narrow stairs to go to sleep, go down the hall to shower or pee, and eat breakfast with total strangers, would you think you were dealing with a bed and breakfast?
I don't anything wrong with the curtains either, so it must be the chromosome.
You guys really can't see how wrinkled those drapes are? Look at the bottom of picture #1. They look sad.
Now that you point it out, I see it, sorta, in the first pic. But I'd have thought it was just the way the drapes were hanging when you snapped the shutter if you hadn't brought it to my attention.
I think you should just get linen drapes and assume they'll always be wrinkled. Takes the pressure off.
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