Cleaning up is SO rewarding. I’ve had a storage unit for 13 years since I downsized and I brought back the last of the ‘small stuff’ last week. Slowly working my way through that. There’s only a ‘mid-century dining table’, some velour chairs, a sofa bed (claimed by a neighbour who’ll collect it in five months, a coffee table and five filing cabinets left in the storage unit! Not long now. Enjoy the decluttering and recolouring. It’s definitely rewarding. 🤗🤗
Thanks, Beth. Sounds like you're on the home stretch. What have you got planned for the money you won't be spending on a storage unit anymore? ☺️
The house reclaiming is within reach, but my husband has so much more at his shop that I know we'll be at this for some time. I've set my sights on a Labor Day Yard Sale. Nothing like a deadline, right? Do keep me posted on your progress. It's inspiring!
I like the new color a lot. Very chill. As much as I enjoy your storytelling, this post isn't quite compelling enough to get me to paint the rooms in the house I bought three years ago. In my defense, I have patched the holes in the walls. Well, some of them, anyway.
I love your trip down "repaint lane." A familiar trip among all parents attempting to freshen up the empty nest....Regarding the Triumphal Arch.....IT already is stained with ugliness...can't seem to glare at that T part of the structure, without my angry mind jerking away the i....the h....the a...and l.....and seeing something directly from the architectural world of "Hell No...."
I feel like we blew past the freshen up stage and landed in major overhaul stage. 😅 Or maybe that's just my age talking.
I know what you mean about the ugliness. There's already way too much UMP in the world, we certainly don't need a gilded reminder right next to Arlington National Cemetery. I hope the veterans' push back will be the kiss of death for this new atrocity.
Ha! Thanks for the vote(s) of confidence on the room decor. Air B & B's are not legal here in town except in grandfathered situations, but visitors are! :)
Oh, Elizabeth, you always intrigue or humor me. I haven’t actually finished reading because I’m heading out for a busy day, but I wanted to say that your comment about the tattoo industry made me laugh. I’ll check in again with you later!
It didn’t, but I know exactly what you mean about how the years can go by without attending to repairs that need attending to. I have a broken gas cap on my truck. It’s been broken for a year. The guy pumping my gas says, “Just go to Auto Zone and pick one up. Or order one on Amazon.’
“Yeah, I know, I should,” I say. And then continue with the demands that need attending to today. (The gas cap is just one small example. There are so many things…)
But my busy day took me down Cape and I managed to include a walk at one of my favorite spots on the National Seashore, so to me, it was a most accomplished day!
I just checked the Encyclopedia of Priorities to be sure: Favorite spots on the National Seashore win out over replacing broken gas caps. You're pointed in the right direction, Don.
Haha, thank you, Elizabeth. Did you ever read All I Need to know I Learned In Kindergarten? I think of that book every time I put off mowing the lawn or fixing the house!
Your posts are always praise worthy but this one stood out for its mock-serious intellectual framing, faux-formal analysis and absurd exaggeration. And if you’re thinking that sounds suspiciously like AI, your spidey sense is operating just fine. I’ve been slow to adapt probably due to my innate suspicious nature, but I used your post as an opportunity to see if ChatGPT has a sense of humor by sharing a few excerpts. (Sans political references.) Apparently it does. At the risk of stating the obvious, here’s what I learned from my query. “The humor is not joke-punchline comedy; it’s cultivated wit. The narrator sounds intelligent, self-aware, slightly weary, affectionate, and amused by human nature — including her own parenting decisions.” I couldn’t agree more. And of course that Monty Python reference!! I confess I may have violated protocol and cheated the system with my little experiment so I won’t be a repeat offender. The point is, what a crazy wonderful post! And give that girl a big hug from us when she gets home.
Now that's funny! What a relief to know that when AI takes over I might have a shot at being kept on for show material. "Intelligent, self-aware, slightly weary..." is the nicest thing anyone has called me all week. Wait. Is it watching me?
Seriously, Rob, I appreciate the praise and will definitely pass along the hug.
My husband and I had finally decided to repaint our entire house interior , during and after Covid : it was our reckoning with our own odd color choices ; dark green , pale green , ‘Rusty Dodge’( my husband’s name for the color) , as well as ‘cheddar cheese’. All this with full time work , pandemic, and anxiety producing political issues- what fun !
We narrowed the palette down to two colors of calm , and haven’t regretted a single minute. At the same time , I was going to a therapist who told me that if I painted my closets , I would ‘hate my house less ‘ - I’m no therapist , but at that moment , I felt that I could have made at least a good impression of one !
Rusty Dodge and cheddar cheese—haha! Your house was clearly living its best life. As for the therapist (and if it wasn't already, this will make it very obvious that I'm prone to pulling up old comedies in my head) it sounds like they came from the Bob Newhart school of training.
Just because the arch 'requires' congressional approval ...does that mean it won't go forward? I think not necessarily in this administration....spike that blood pressure baby. Take a look at the NPR story about Big Bend! WTF and I don't say that lightly. Enjoy your company! ~J
The blank remains a mystery but I'm taking suggestions. You're right: "requires congressional approval" isn't what it once was, but I hope it motivates people to make calls. The only thing I can say about Big Bend is that like the veterans and the arch, the bipartisan pushback is a good sign. I'm taking comfort where I can find it these days.
This is an excellent weaving of the personal and the political. Great writing, Elizabeth! And congratulations on completing the painting. At one time, we had a room that was Admiral Blue and another that was DEEP red. Four coats of paint later, they calmed.
Thank you, Kim! Admiral Blue and DEEP red, eh? That's a house with strong patriotic opinions. I'm glad you had what it took to talk those colors down. Four coats sounds more like penance than a paint job. Grateful for you.
We too had a Grinch green kids room, turned guest room, now a terra-cotta hued laundry room. I called it Godawful green (kind of like our old Cutlass convertible, remember that?). What we were thinking???
Fist bump, Stephanie, and thanks for the comment. I can only blame youth and misplaced confidence for those color choices, and for the record, I totally missed an opportunity with Godawful green.
I'm afraid I've forgotten the Cutlass, even though it sounds like the kind of thing I could never unsee. I wish you could share a picture here.
The diagram with the Washington monument reminds me of something that really bothers me. It changes color about a third of the way up because when they resumed work on it after the Civil War, they couldn’t get stone the same color, so they simply carried on regardless of how I felt about it.
At this point, I think the only remedy is an overlay of vinyl siding from Home Depot.
(This might be one of the “look squirrel” comments I often make.”)
Switter! The Washington Monument colorblock has been bothering me on your behalf for years, and I didn't even know it. Vinyl siding feels right, maybe with a Trex deck? And yes, I see the squirrel, and I am chasing it with you.
I used to go to a lot of meetings in WDC back when USAID was still a thing and the monument was always such an eyesore. Even if we don’t have enough money for vinyl siding, we could at least match some paint to the upper, what, two thirds, and paint the lower part to match. “Sears Weatherbeater, the Official Paint on Washington Monument.” Paint would easily leave enough for Trex.
Love the room, and peonies are my favorite flower. They're the flower every other flower wishes they could be. This made me laugh, too. I had teenage daughters and I let them choose their colors. One chose pink while the other went with rolls of reed fencing, which I dutifully stapled to her walls. She had a thin paisley bedspread from India on her bed and I made curtains out of two more. Very exotic and so 70s. I took them all down when I caught her smoking out her window one night. Everything in there was highly flammable--something I didn't think about until then!
Reed fencing stapled to the walls? I am in awe. That is a vision that puts Evil Minion purple to shame. Some parents remove the doors to their kids' bedrooms as punishment. You removed the wall coverings. Folks, here's a woman with her priorities in the right place!
Peonies are amazing, but I'd have a hard time calling any one flower my favorite. You know I can't draw lines in the sand like that.
So many fantastic lines and phrases in this, Elizabeth. Congratulations on reclaiming the color of both rooms - and on the control that reclaiming and pruning brings. The pink room looks beautiful and calm, though the sanitorium line is funny. I hope she enjoys it when she visits.
The rooms feel rather grown up now — just like my daughters. ☺️ Next up, our bedroom which has spent the last 15 years in a color I’ve come to think of as “Bandaid.”
So grateful for your steady presence, Amy. Truly, truly grateful.
This made me snort-laugh: "...the cultural memory of the Before Times has become heavily curated by people who apparently spent eighteen months gestating sourdough starters and developing meaningful relationships with their herb gardens. But some of us were still getting up every morning, doing our jobs and wiping down groceries like raccoons with OCD." I have written about the ways in which working through the pandemic was easier than pre-pandemic, but "easier" is relative and it was still effing awful. I so appreciate you writing it like it was.
And I love your finished room! It looks like something out of Anne of Green Gables. It recently took me more than two years to finish painting our kitchen cabinets. Like you, I tend to focus my anxiety about the outer world toward my private one, but the past decade has really tested my ability to do that! I've mostly tuned out what he's done/is doing to our capital because it feels so unreal and dystopian and I hate it SO MUCH. Time to go out and stare at the peonies that are blooming this week!
Love knowing you have peonies to stare at, Rita. Mine came from a favorite flower grower at the farmers market.
My proximity to DC (just had to go there yesterday to pick up the kiddo at the airport) makes it pretty impossible to ignore that aspect of this reign of terror. But I’ve found it impossible to keep up lately with the various Substacks and news sources I read for balanced, curated information. I know it’s not just okay to step away at times but essential. Remembering that the exhaustion is part of the strategy helps me feel more empowered by the decision to pull back at times.
Thank you, as always, for your thoughtful comment.
Well, of course. But roses being the obvious choice, I was convinced it had to be something more imaginative. Coltrane’s playing as I type. Thanks, John.
Cleaning up is SO rewarding. I’ve had a storage unit for 13 years since I downsized and I brought back the last of the ‘small stuff’ last week. Slowly working my way through that. There’s only a ‘mid-century dining table’, some velour chairs, a sofa bed (claimed by a neighbour who’ll collect it in five months, a coffee table and five filing cabinets left in the storage unit! Not long now. Enjoy the decluttering and recolouring. It’s definitely rewarding. 🤗🤗
Thanks, Beth. Sounds like you're on the home stretch. What have you got planned for the money you won't be spending on a storage unit anymore? ☺️
The house reclaiming is within reach, but my husband has so much more at his shop that I know we'll be at this for some time. I've set my sights on a Labor Day Yard Sale. Nothing like a deadline, right? Do keep me posted on your progress. It's inspiring!
I like the new color a lot. Very chill. As much as I enjoy your storytelling, this post isn't quite compelling enough to get me to paint the rooms in the house I bought three years ago. In my defense, I have patched the holes in the walls. Well, some of them, anyway.
Look out, David. I hear hole patching is a gateway drug. Next thing you know, you'll be testing out paint swatches in different light.
Thanks for chiming in today. I'll work on becoming more compelling, but as they say, I think this might be a you problem.
Thanks for starting my day with a good laugh!
I love your trip down "repaint lane." A familiar trip among all parents attempting to freshen up the empty nest....Regarding the Triumphal Arch.....IT already is stained with ugliness...can't seem to glare at that T part of the structure, without my angry mind jerking away the i....the h....the a...and l.....and seeing something directly from the architectural world of "Hell No...."
I feel like we blew past the freshen up stage and landed in major overhaul stage. 😅 Or maybe that's just my age talking.
I know what you mean about the ugliness. There's already way too much UMP in the world, we certainly don't need a gilded reminder right next to Arlington National Cemetery. I hope the veterans' push back will be the kiss of death for this new atrocity.
Call or write your representatives!
Grateful for your comment, as always, Barry.
The room looks great. Very relaxing and inviting. Wish I could try it out!
Ooh , I was just thinking the same thing! Maybe an air bnb ?
Ha! Thanks for the vote(s) of confidence on the room decor. Air B & B's are not legal here in town except in grandfathered situations, but visitors are! :)
Thanks, Teresa, if you get over to this coast, do let me know!
You know I will!
Oh, Elizabeth, you always intrigue or humor me. I haven’t actually finished reading because I’m heading out for a busy day, but I wanted to say that your comment about the tattoo industry made me laugh. I’ll check in again with you later!
I love that you stopped mid-essay and still chimed in. Hope your busy day did not involve staring at paint swatches.
It didn’t, but I know exactly what you mean about how the years can go by without attending to repairs that need attending to. I have a broken gas cap on my truck. It’s been broken for a year. The guy pumping my gas says, “Just go to Auto Zone and pick one up. Or order one on Amazon.’
“Yeah, I know, I should,” I say. And then continue with the demands that need attending to today. (The gas cap is just one small example. There are so many things…)
But my busy day took me down Cape and I managed to include a walk at one of my favorite spots on the National Seashore, so to me, it was a most accomplished day!
I just checked the Encyclopedia of Priorities to be sure: Favorite spots on the National Seashore win out over replacing broken gas caps. You're pointed in the right direction, Don.
Thank you for coming back here, again and again.
Haha, thank you, Elizabeth. Did you ever read All I Need to know I Learned In Kindergarten? I think of that book every time I put off mowing the lawn or fixing the house!
Your posts are always praise worthy but this one stood out for its mock-serious intellectual framing, faux-formal analysis and absurd exaggeration. And if you’re thinking that sounds suspiciously like AI, your spidey sense is operating just fine. I’ve been slow to adapt probably due to my innate suspicious nature, but I used your post as an opportunity to see if ChatGPT has a sense of humor by sharing a few excerpts. (Sans political references.) Apparently it does. At the risk of stating the obvious, here’s what I learned from my query. “The humor is not joke-punchline comedy; it’s cultivated wit. The narrator sounds intelligent, self-aware, slightly weary, affectionate, and amused by human nature — including her own parenting decisions.” I couldn’t agree more. And of course that Monty Python reference!! I confess I may have violated protocol and cheated the system with my little experiment so I won’t be a repeat offender. The point is, what a crazy wonderful post! And give that girl a big hug from us when she gets home.
Now that's funny! What a relief to know that when AI takes over I might have a shot at being kept on for show material. "Intelligent, self-aware, slightly weary..." is the nicest thing anyone has called me all week. Wait. Is it watching me?
Seriously, Rob, I appreciate the praise and will definitely pass along the hug.
My husband and I had finally decided to repaint our entire house interior , during and after Covid : it was our reckoning with our own odd color choices ; dark green , pale green , ‘Rusty Dodge’( my husband’s name for the color) , as well as ‘cheddar cheese’. All this with full time work , pandemic, and anxiety producing political issues- what fun !
We narrowed the palette down to two colors of calm , and haven’t regretted a single minute. At the same time , I was going to a therapist who told me that if I painted my closets , I would ‘hate my house less ‘ - I’m no therapist , but at that moment , I felt that I could have made at least a good impression of one !
Keep calm , and paint on
Rusty Dodge and cheddar cheese—haha! Your house was clearly living its best life. As for the therapist (and if it wasn't already, this will make it very obvious that I'm prone to pulling up old comedies in my head) it sounds like they came from the Bob Newhart school of training.
https://vimeo.com/97370236
Thanks, Melody!
Raindrops indeed! Did you fill i the blank.
Just because the arch 'requires' congressional approval ...does that mean it won't go forward? I think not necessarily in this administration....spike that blood pressure baby. Take a look at the NPR story about Big Bend! WTF and I don't say that lightly. Enjoy your company! ~J
Thanks, Janice.
The blank remains a mystery but I'm taking suggestions. You're right: "requires congressional approval" isn't what it once was, but I hope it motivates people to make calls. The only thing I can say about Big Bend is that like the veterans and the arch, the bipartisan pushback is a good sign. I'm taking comfort where I can find it these days.
This is an excellent weaving of the personal and the political. Great writing, Elizabeth! And congratulations on completing the painting. At one time, we had a room that was Admiral Blue and another that was DEEP red. Four coats of paint later, they calmed.
Thank you, Kim! Admiral Blue and DEEP red, eh? That's a house with strong patriotic opinions. I'm glad you had what it took to talk those colors down. Four coats sounds more like penance than a paint job. Grateful for you.
We too had a Grinch green kids room, turned guest room, now a terra-cotta hued laundry room. I called it Godawful green (kind of like our old Cutlass convertible, remember that?). What we were thinking???
Fist bump, Stephanie, and thanks for the comment. I can only blame youth and misplaced confidence for those color choices, and for the record, I totally missed an opportunity with Godawful green.
I'm afraid I've forgotten the Cutlass, even though it sounds like the kind of thing I could never unsee. I wish you could share a picture here.
The diagram with the Washington monument reminds me of something that really bothers me. It changes color about a third of the way up because when they resumed work on it after the Civil War, they couldn’t get stone the same color, so they simply carried on regardless of how I felt about it.
At this point, I think the only remedy is an overlay of vinyl siding from Home Depot.
(This might be one of the “look squirrel” comments I often make.”)
Switter! The Washington Monument colorblock has been bothering me on your behalf for years, and I didn't even know it. Vinyl siding feels right, maybe with a Trex deck? And yes, I see the squirrel, and I am chasing it with you.
I used to go to a lot of meetings in WDC back when USAID was still a thing and the monument was always such an eyesore. Even if we don’t have enough money for vinyl siding, we could at least match some paint to the upper, what, two thirds, and paint the lower part to match. “Sears Weatherbeater, the Official Paint on Washington Monument.” Paint would easily leave enough for Trex.
Love the room, and peonies are my favorite flower. They're the flower every other flower wishes they could be. This made me laugh, too. I had teenage daughters and I let them choose their colors. One chose pink while the other went with rolls of reed fencing, which I dutifully stapled to her walls. She had a thin paisley bedspread from India on her bed and I made curtains out of two more. Very exotic and so 70s. I took them all down when I caught her smoking out her window one night. Everything in there was highly flammable--something I didn't think about until then!
Reed fencing stapled to the walls? I am in awe. That is a vision that puts Evil Minion purple to shame. Some parents remove the doors to their kids' bedrooms as punishment. You removed the wall coverings. Folks, here's a woman with her priorities in the right place!
Peonies are amazing, but I'd have a hard time calling any one flower my favorite. You know I can't draw lines in the sand like that.
So many fantastic lines and phrases in this, Elizabeth. Congratulations on reclaiming the color of both rooms - and on the control that reclaiming and pruning brings. The pink room looks beautiful and calm, though the sanitorium line is funny. I hope she enjoys it when she visits.
The rooms feel rather grown up now — just like my daughters. ☺️ Next up, our bedroom which has spent the last 15 years in a color I’ve come to think of as “Bandaid.”
So grateful for your steady presence, Amy. Truly, truly grateful.
I have a terrible room color, too. I totally understand how that happens… AND… how we just live with it for long, long periods of time. Bandaid… lol.
This made me snort-laugh: "...the cultural memory of the Before Times has become heavily curated by people who apparently spent eighteen months gestating sourdough starters and developing meaningful relationships with their herb gardens. But some of us were still getting up every morning, doing our jobs and wiping down groceries like raccoons with OCD." I have written about the ways in which working through the pandemic was easier than pre-pandemic, but "easier" is relative and it was still effing awful. I so appreciate you writing it like it was.
And I love your finished room! It looks like something out of Anne of Green Gables. It recently took me more than two years to finish painting our kitchen cabinets. Like you, I tend to focus my anxiety about the outer world toward my private one, but the past decade has really tested my ability to do that! I've mostly tuned out what he's done/is doing to our capital because it feels so unreal and dystopian and I hate it SO MUCH. Time to go out and stare at the peonies that are blooming this week!
Love knowing you have peonies to stare at, Rita. Mine came from a favorite flower grower at the farmers market.
My proximity to DC (just had to go there yesterday to pick up the kiddo at the airport) makes it pretty impossible to ignore that aspect of this reign of terror. But I’ve found it impossible to keep up lately with the various Substacks and news sources I read for balanced, curated information. I know it’s not just okay to step away at times but essential. Remembering that the exhaustion is part of the strategy helps me feel more empowered by the decision to pull back at times.
Thank you, as always, for your thoughtful comment.
Sorry I'm late, I got sidetracked into cleaning out my filing cabinet. A shredder party!
It really must be the season! I hope fresh hells give you the chance to tackle the linen closet.
With a kiddo home from Australia (temporarily), the ingress is likely going to outcompete the egress. Will check in from the front lines asap. 😅
Enjoy your kiddo!
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens.
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things.
If you need to detox after those lyrics, I recommend this version by John Coltrane:
https://open.spotify.com/track/3ZikLQCnH3SIswlGENBcKe?si=g3LU0Q23RRyc758SHgrbHw
Well, of course. But roses being the obvious choice, I was convinced it had to be something more imaginative. Coltrane’s playing as I type. Thanks, John.
Right after I hit snd, I thought "... but there's no way she didn't think of that!" But a good excuse for some Coltrane.