The outside air is cool and moist. The night is filled with frog song. Inside the house is spacious and the guest room we’ve been given is fit to be a bed and breakfast. Our room is stocked with everything from a canopied bed, to a breakfast table, to a shelf full of teas, to a basket full of bath and hand lotions. It is all so thoroughly thought out.
I look around and I wish I had a space like this to give over to guests. Currently our only guest space is a futon couch in my office. Usually the only guests we have are my family. My family will quite happily throw air mattresses on the floor. But I’d love to be able to provide beauty.
I think of my home and I see it with the eyes of familiarity. My home does not seem beautiful, or spacious. I know where all the patches are, the cracks in the walls. I know that the front room, supposedly the nicest room in the house, hasn’t had baseboards since the year we moved in. We removed the baseboards to lay the hardwood floors and never put any back. I see clearly the dark stripes on the paint that mark the locations of the studs behind the wall board. For some reason the stud-backed boards collect more dirt. I wish I knew why.
I could go on listing the faults of my decorating. The core of the problems is this. My house is not beautiful, I wish it were. The reason my house is not beautiful is because I have chosen to spend my time and money on other things. That will probably continue for a time longer. Money is still tight. This expensive trip to Seattle is not going to make it any looser. Perhaps I need to frequent garage sales again. There I might find things which are beautiful and inexpensive. Perhaps I can squeeze enough money out of my budget and enough time out of my schedule to paint some rooms. Just paint would make a world of difference.