Home Furnishing Madness

Hi Everyone (This is a long one. But it was cathartic. If you get all the way through it, thank you.),
So being home on maternity leave has made me a bit obsessive about my home and all the things I hate about it. We bought this house three years ago and just sort of threw what we had wherever it fit. We didn't even do anything to the house, like painting, curtains, new fixtures, easy stuff like that. When I worked all the time this stuff didn't really bother me. I was happy just to be home. But now, all the extra hours within these walls have made me a bit wacky.
It's possible that my wackiness is compounded by the fact that I need to feel in control of something. If it can't be my health, then by God it can be my furniture (or some such psychology). My step Aunt Deborah visited me the other day and I mentioned this problem I am having and she had some good thoughts about how everything is so accessible to our generation, it's hard to not always want more, get more, obtain more and always be looking for more instead of just being happy with what we have. But I think what is really making me itchy with the urge to redecorate all the time are the blogs I read. Even though I started mine to chronicle my cancer, to keep my friends and family informed, to garner support, wisdom, feedback and a cyber shoulder to cry on, what I actually read most aren't health related dealing-with-breast-cancer blogs, but interior design blogs. I read them a lot. Like every day, at least thirty of them. Some favorites: Decorno, SF Girl by The Bay, Habitually Chic, Elements of Style, Inside the Loop...I could go on and on here.
I actually didn't even know about blogging or blogs until a blogger posted something about my place of employment almost three years ago, specific to what I do, and our marketing department forwarded me the link because they thought I would be interested. That blog was Oh Happy Day. Soon Jordan was my secret best friend and I would get mad if I didn't find a new post to read daily. Ah! The pressures on a popular blogger. I feel that now, not because I am popular, but because my blog has succeeded very well in one thing. It is the way I connect with some distant family members and they want info--but mainly about Sadie (and I don't blame them). So here's some photos of her to satisfy them. This is the standard look she always gives the camera. I am lucky if I ever get a smile.



This was taken on a super hot day last week at Nina and Dan's. We went swimming earlier to cool off. Here she is hanging out under her little baby shade tent. See same look.



And because these same family members would also appreciate a little Amara action, here she is on that same day doing her own thing, keeping cool.



And here she is with her beautiful mama.



We went and visited Hannah the other day at her salon in the city. Notice the strapless dress? Yeah, I can wear these now that my breasts are just skin covering tupperware--but I am digressing here. See my face? I am pleading with Greg to take the picture already. He was trying to wait until Sadie smiled. Again, the babe does not give it up for the camera.



Unless of course you are holding her over your head and making a fool of yourself.



Sadie is amazing. She sleeps through the night, from 8 PM until 7 AM every morning (I am probably jinxing myself by typing this out) which always amazes other moms. She started eating solid food. She sits up. She grabs and bats at toys and makes great gurgling sounds with her drool and lots of little funny mewing and high pitched squeals which make Greg and I look at each other in shock and awe. Like Wow! She's a real person. It's a little bit scary. Here she is getting all worked up over a new toy (a gift from another blogger through a Swap that I Suwannee organized).



So these interior design blogs agitate me. They inspire me in a frenzied sort of way and all of a sudden I am up late at night perusing Craigs List and all other sorts of furniture websites like a junkie looking for a fix, ignoring how my tailbone feels like it's growing roots in to the chair, to find the perfect dining table. Or buying lampshade upon lampshade and returning them one by one in the attempt to obtain matching bedside lamps for our bedroom. I even bought a bed from Pottery Barn a few weeks ago that I didn't even really like (because it was affordable--relatively--and had storage, something seriously lacking in our little cottage in the woods) and then when it hit me how crazy this was, to buy something I don't even like, just for the satisfaction of buying something, I called their customer service and cancelled the order. When they told me it was already on the way from their distribution center, I made up some lie that I had to move and my new place didn't have room for the bed because I was so ashamed of my wishy washy impulsiveness. I also did this with two bedside tables. Yikes.
When I take Sadie on walks, all I do is daydream about finding the perfect rug for our living room that covers more than the current one because soon Sadie will be crawling and trying to walk. Before I thought our hardwood floors looked vintage and rustic, but now all I foresee is digging splinters out of tender little palms and chubby knees.



I wouldn't even know where to begin looking for a rug that doesn't cost a crazy amount of money and that both Greg and I agree on.
See that's the other problem. Greg. Not to pinpoint and/or stereotype half of the world's population, but aren't men (straight men) supposed to not really care about the home's decor? I thought as much until I met Greg. He cares. A lot. And he is getting bugged by me. I don't blame him. I think he has put up with me until now because he knows I am obsessing as a way to distract myself from having cancer. I thought I found the perfect dining table a few weeks ago off of Craigs list. The dining table is important because I am the one in the family that hosts the Thanksgiving and the Christmas and when I am feeling ambitious, the Passover too (my family is religiously mixy. We do it all). It needed to be small because our house is tiny, but it needed to get bigger for when the extended family comes over. Anyway, I made him go pick it up in Santa Rosa on his way home from work (in Healdsburg) and boy was I wrong. Never buy anything sight unseen (or from a crappy photo). It is so not what I want. This was stupider than the Pottery Barn fiasco. The table has been sitting in our front walk way ever since gathering dust, fading in the sun. An every day sad reminder of my foolish impulsiveness and self inflicted urgency to refurnish our entire house before I have to go back to work.



But it didn't stop me. Soon I was making plans with a woman in Mill Valley to look at another table and before I knew what was happening, it was in the back of my car and I was heading home. Greg hates it. But I like it. It has three leaves, so it can sit ten people if need be. What do you all think? Am I crazy?



I know the chairs are all wrong with it. But what chairs would look good? I already wasted half a day borrowing a chair from Beach House Style to show Greg (a store worth checking out if you live in the Bay Area). See. I am getting better. I am showing things to him before I make the purchase. He didn't like them. Sigh. I had to drive it back. I know they weren't perfect, but I was willing to settle because it was a set of six. I am so desperate.

See secretly I am hoping that there are some interior design bloggers out there who have found my blog through the randomness of blogging and can help me out here.

What is one to do when they feel that frenetic urge to just purchase everything and anything to satisfy the craving of having a home fully furnished?

And what the hell should I do about this fireplace?



I loved it when we moved in. So rustic. So cozy in the winter. But now, we feel guilty lighting a fire, putting all that smoke in to the air. Most of the houses out here were originally summer houses, so they don't have central heating. In the winters when I drive down over the hill in to the valley, you should see the blanket of smoke. Makes your lungs hurt just to look at it. In this picture it looks like the witch's furnace from some scary fairy tale. To change it at all would take a sledgehammer, and a lot of money. So that's right. That's a dog bed you see there. This is what our fireplace is used for now.



And these lamps? The greens on the shade and base don't match. But I still like them. Have I lost my mind? Do I just like them because liking them means I can stop looking for lamps?



Here's what really drives me crazy. Look. These are ugly towel bars. We don't even use them. Above is the hardware for a glass shelf. They need to be removed and the holes filled and the wall painted. Think I have time to do that? Nope.





And see this painting (Yes, Frida is allowed on the sofa).



We bought it at an antique store because we had just adopted her and named her Frida after the artist, who we love, but do we love her that much to hang a copy of her 'Me and My Parrots' painting on the main wall of our living room as a sort of inside joke only we get? Wouldn't a mirror look better here? Greg doesn't think so. The man doesn't like mirrors. Our home is desperately needing mirrors to open it up. To make it look bigger. But that would mean I would have to find a mirror we agree on. So much work.

And check out this wackiness. Look at this ginormous TV.




Isn't the cabinet too small for it? This is all wrong, right?

And now I am totally letting it all hang out. This is the office. Look at this mess!



This is where I am sitting right now while typing. It's all arranged wrong. I love both those chairs, but what are they doing there? Nothing. That's my vacuum in the lower right corner. We don't have a utility closet to store any of that kind of stuff. We don't have closets really at all. Sigh.

We are so in need of a kitchen remodel. See this.



This is a cabinet I cannot get at. There's barely room for a trash can, much less a human being. How dumb is that?

Here's something even more dumb. While in bed, this is our view.



Nice, huh? We hardly ever turn it on. It needs to go. But then what would we do when I need to watch Project Runway and Greg wants to watch CNN? A smaller, white TV would make this all better. Like this one that another blogger already wrote about here (hence my hankering to now go out and spend $1000 to get one).

About the only room I am not totally irritated with is this one.





Which is good because this room belongs to the most important person in my life.
Here she is with me, yesterday at an oncology follow up appointment at the Breast Care Center. This was her first visit with me (well, outside my tummy). I am smiling like a freak in some sort of attempt to get Sadie to smile for the camera. Like if smiles worked through osmosis or something. As you can tell, didn't work.



Maybe I will just move in with Sadie and call it a day.

Thanks for reading my hating my house rant. Though I think I will only get responses from my friends who will tell me I am crazy and to be thankful for what I have, which is a good point. My mom didn't get her kitchen remodeled until she was fifty. She lived with a poopy brown electric stove and cabinets from the 70s and the crappiest, sticky no matter how hard you scrubbed it, linoleum floors for years. Who am I to think I should get better, right?

But seriously, if you have any advice for me at all, I would surely appreciate it.

Love,
Rosalie

PS: Oh my GOD was this the most epic posting or what? For those wondering how I do it. It took me almost three days to get this all done.