I finally made a friend here.
Ok, not a real friend. But a hair-dresser.
She’s the first person I’ve talked to in Charleston besides John, Marshall’s cashier, and…the painters.
It’s so nice to wake up every morning and not have the painters here. I’ve actually been making progress on our house. We bought a new mailbox and painted it ‘Charleston green,’ I bought some new wicker baskets to replace the old wicker baskets I had from college, we bought new plates, bowls, place mats and we’ve finally moved out of the guest bedroom.
The master bathroom is almost done, the guest bathroom is completely done, the guest bedroom is ready for a guest (hint, hint).
But the projects don’t ever really end. John has Friday-Monday off from work, and we have Friday-Monday packed with errands and a To Do list of all of the hard stuff that we’ve avoided.
- Move the TV downstairs and mount it (this is hard, since I literally cannot lift it)
- Move the couch out of the FROG into the office (this is hard, because your have to take off the doors)
- Replace the mailbox (this is hard, because we have to pour new concrete)
- Decide if we’re getting a coffee table (this is hard, because I want one and John does not)
- Buy patio furniture (this is hard, because I want the patio to be a wine room, and all of the outdoor bar sets are thousands of dollars)
- Pull out all of the plants in the backyard (this is hard, because it’s manual labor)
- Pick a new countertop (this is hard, because we’re obviously color-blind, based on paint experience)
- Pick a new kitchen floor (see countertop)
- Decorate the walls
The last one is the hardest of all. John’s mom sent me a gorgeous book about decorating from a designer who suggests that you should decorate with things you like. Obviously? But his suggestion has more meaning. Put the trinket from France on the chest you bought that one weekend with your exboyfriend next to the rug you stole from that coffee shop that one time it was raining in Vermont.
All of those experiences take time. And I’m too impatient to wait to find that unexpected thing I just had to have from that one time we got lost in the middle of nowhere and had to wait out the tornado in the roadside antique shop.
Actually, I did think about looking for things on our cross country trip. But we had no room in the car, and both John and I aren’t really souvenir people. The only pieces we brought home were plastic cups from baseball games. So when we have a guest from a certain state I can bring out the cup for them to drink out of.
I kind of just want to shop online, pick out some artwork that doesn’t make me nauseous, and buy more wicker baskets. And candles. If I buy things I like, even if they don’t remind me of a place, won’t they eventually remind me of THIS place? That’s the lamp I bought for our first house together in Charleston (from Marshall’s, naturally). And that’s the Yankee Pumpkin Candle I bought while John was getting a 10 dollar haircut at the mall, the one that joined the rest of my pumpkin candles the first fall we were living on the east coast. And that American Flag pillow over there? That was originally going in the guest room, but I decided it looked bad one day when John was at work, and he didn’t even notice I moved it to the couch, because it fit in so well.
The one thing we both agree that we really want and can’t live without is a wooden American flag to hang on the living room wall made out of an old weathered fence post. Unfortunately, online it’s the equivalent of four weeks of groceries. John’s waiting for it to go on sale, a second time. I think we can make it. Maybe we can make all of our wall art, we have plenty of paint left over from all the failed wall colors.
I’ll be posting pictures of the house as soon as we get it in acceptable picture condition!
MoJo Adventures 