mundane saturday

This morning we got up somewhere between 8:30 and 9:00, having stayed up last night to watch most of the opening ceremonies of the winter olympics. We've been slowly straightening up the house: vacuuming piles of pet fur, putting away piles of clothes, scrubbing piles of dishes, washing piles of laundry.

We also put up really wonderful new curtain rods and curtains in our bedroom. I have to talk about this, actually. We are slow decorators. Check that--we're binge decorators. We've lived in our house for 2 and a half years now, but we've been taking our time with redecorating. This is partly to conserve money, but mostly because we have never really been sure how we wanted to redecorate. Stuff seems to get done all of a sudden. Some piece will fall into place (a new chair, a great color) and we'll finally figure out how to build a room around it.

So, back to the story, Kara had a bedroom binge recently that was brought on by finding the perfect comforter cover. She's been looking for the perfect comforter cover for 3 or 4 years now, and she finally found it on the website of a store (yeah, it's that one) whose closest branch is several hours away. Her sister, however, lives 15 minutes from one, and she agreed to pick everything up and ship it to us.

While we waited for the package, Kara found matching sheets, curtains, and curtain rods. We put up the curtain rods--the last piece of the puzzle--today. Now that everything is in place, I have to say our room is a much nicer place. The problem is, all the new stuff points out the glaring need for a new paint job in the room and a new dresser. But before any of that can be done, there's a long line of other stuff to finish: (1) replace two odd-sized exterior doors; (2) replace the washing machine; (3) buy and install a dishwasher; (4) reroute the bathroom exhaust fan so it leads out of the house, rather than into the attic; (5) finish patining the stairs and the upsatirs hallway. And then there's the kitchen ... oh man the kitchen.

So, I think this is why we're bingers. Each job we finish leads to something else that still has to be done. And we enjoy living life so much more than we enjoy home improvement. So when a lull happens or inspriation drops from the heavens, we take a quick break to tidy something up. But until then, we're just good at living with things the way they are.