Falling off the Welcome Wagon.

I've been informed by the officials in charge of "Operation Fix This fucking House" that I can chalk another room up as (basically) done, provided I can submit dated photographs and a "clean" urine sample. They sure are picky over there at OFTFH headquarters.

The entryway is 99% complete. Woo. Hoo.

Well, it's technically a room, and we don't have much in the "win" column yet, so just give me this one, will you? The only other finished room is the new crapper off of our bedroom.

I take the entryway seriously, as obviously this is the first thing people see when they enter my home (that's what she said!), the second usually being cat hairballs the size of tumbleweeds lurking in the corners, ready to attack when provoked.
I want the room to be inviting, but not so inviting that I have to slip my guests a roofie and leave their unconscious bodies by the side of the freeway with a note pinned to their underpants.

I hate when it comes to that.

This is what this room looked like when we first moved in:

Painted mint green, with smelly 40-50 (no lie) year-old carpeting that smelled of old lady and cabbage. The same curtains could be found in the living room and dining room, and had a pastel depiction of what appeared to be the White House. There was no door on the closet, and the light fixture was a dainty floral-etched glass & brass number.

Here the Mr. is, trying to pry the carpet from the otherwise-pristine wood floors- the carpet was so old it had sort of "fused" to the wood. We didn't want to scratch the wood, so we had to use plastic scrapers and water to get that nasty carpet out. This pretty much sucked hairy donkey balls. You will note the delightful floral wallpaper and the fact that we had to wear masks whilst doing this. The smell was painful.

For the next nine years, the entryway was painted a glossy red with a light-mustard colored ceiling. We were so tired of white-walled apartments when we first moved in that we maybe went a little "overboard" with color. Like, stop me before I paint the cats to coordinate "overboard". I actually really loved being greeted by the red, but it really was starting to look as dated as feathered hair and prairie skirts.

I don't have too many decent pictures of the red, but here it is in a pic from a while back when we were going out for some reason or another. You get to see the room, plus I get to redeem myself from my last post with a picture that doesn't resemble Nick Nolte's mug shot.

Now, how it looks in it's newest incarnation:

Soft metallic silver walls, white ceiling, a little more "minimalist" overall. Well, "minimalist" for me, anyways. I like to call my brand of style "restrained clutter" or "cluttered minimalist"- take your pick.
We now have a closet door- stained as close to matching as possible. It ain't easy matching old, perfectly worn, honey-colored maple floors. The flat rock on the radiator has a few fossils in it- I don't even really remember where it came from.

The print above the radiator is a 1972 print I picked up at a vintage store called "Loving Couple". I think it looks like my cats, even though I bought it before I had both of them.


We have one of those stairways going upstairs that is sort of a "bridge" to the kitchen- you can access it from both sides, which I love. This feature is nice in that I don't have to walk ALL THE WAY AROUND the house to get to my wine/cheese/snack foods. Whew! Why burn calories when you don't have to, right?:


The prints over the stairs are by Matthew Cipov, and I have to thank Shannon for sending me some fabulous little owl prints by him that started me buying a whole bunch of his stuff. It is creepy and beautiful and minimalist and wonderful:

I have six of his "mask" series prints (two that I haven't put up yet), the one above with the group of young men, and the owl prints from Shannon. That's probably enough...for now.

And you can't see it in these pics, but I also have a snazzy new light in there:


So, if we're keeping score: Two rooms down, 7 or 8 to go.
We should be done sometime around Spring 2013.

If we're lucky.

Oh, how silly of me- it seems that I have tripped and fallen into a vat of wine. My bad.

It seems I slipped yesterday and fell into a big 'ol pile of hangover.

This is what it looks like:

This is what my head currently feels like:


And the rest of me:

What I'm pretty sure I smell like:

What I will likely be requiring for lunch, after-lunch snack, and possibly dinner:

And this company will be seeing a boost in the price of it's stock due to the eleventy hundred that I will be consuming, "beer bong" style:

Happy Friday, my little cheeseburger marching bands. Let's be careful out there this weekend.
Happy Friday.
XO

Will you still love me when I'm 104?

I'm 37. There, I said it.

(addendum: Not my birthday or anything, just thinking about it today. Feel free to send gifts anyways.)

Had you told my 16 year-old self that someday I would be twice that age plus one, I would have immediately imagined myself with a walker, sagging support hose, and attempting to use expired coupons for cigarette brands that no longer exist.
When you're 16, you admire people in their 20's- they can legally go to the bars that you only get into via wriggling through the moldy bathroom vents, and they (unless of course I dated them) had their own apartments.
"Independence!" screams the 20-something years.

But the 30s? The 30s where where you went to wither and die an unremarkable death. The 30's were where a leather miniskirt started looking "comical" rather than "cool", and where rocking a studded army jacket and ripped flannels to the grocery store started looking "homeless" rather than "edgy".
"Pathetic and mediocre!" screams the 30-something years, to a 10-something person.

Well...at least that's what my 16 year-old mind interpreted this current decade of my life to be. Sixteen year-old me didn't bother to plan for the next two hours, let alone the next two decades.

But here I am: alive, well, and not a pair of granny panties or bottle of Metamucil in sight. I mostly have all my original teeth, and I have yet to accidentally poop my pants. So far.

I made a list a while ago of all of the parts about me that have most noticeably changed since 1987ish, and I may as well post it here in the private forums known as the interwebs:

• knees- my left knee is slowly disintegrating, eventually I expect it to have the consistency of homemade applesauce. I'm going to hold out for surgery until I can get one of those replacement knees that plays the theme to "Sanford and Son" when I walk.
• Back- My posture is horrifying these days, but I figure down the road I'll have a second career as a hunchback at a Disney theme park somewhere.
  
• Sleeping habits- actually improved. Gone is the insomnia of my 20's. Now I'm working towards the "sleeping 22 hours a day" of my 80's, much like a cat.
• Feet- Man, these things don't age well, do they? I think I might know now what corns and bunions are, but that doesn't mean I want to.
• Hair- The stuff on my head is better than ever, yet grayer than ever, and luckily I have (so far) been spared the freakish and random stray hairs that people I know sometimes find on things like chins, ears, foreheads and such. The day I have to get my ears waxed is the day I start limiting my clothing to colorful nylon sport suits with metallic tennies.
• Face- I am (so far) loving everything about how my face is aging. Cheekbones appeared out of nowhere, and that cluster of hairy warts between my eyes is hardly noticeable anymore.
• Butt- Though I spend much, much more time suffocating it on the couch for marathon sessions of "Law and Order", it seems to be holding up. No "flat, saggy, old lady ass" happening, and luckily (knock on wood) no extreme widening or looking like a pair of cheap pantyhose stuffed with jell-o fruit salad.
  
• temperament- I have (mostly) given up the angry, pan-throwing, road-raging, starting fights in line for communion ways of my 20s. These days I mete it out sparingly, so if I go to town on you with a verbally abusive tirade that drags in your mother's possible past as a prostitute and that time you had sex with a sheep- you can sure as hell know that you definitely earned it.
• Humor- Where, in my youth, tripping and falling in front of a busload of Italian male models or not noticing that my skirt is tucked into my underpants until four hours after dressing would cause me to retreat into my room for three weeks to write angsty poetry about the incidents and how I blame it all on society's treatment of third-world kittens, now I just laugh it off. Oh, and sometimes take pictures and post it on my blog. I really just don't give a crap anymore, and we all know that shit is funny.
• Sex- I'm going for quality rather than quantity these days. When I want it I want it, but when I don't the Mr. best move on and leave me with my magazines, prescription pills and wine coolers. Let's just say that this is a slight (read: huge) change from my early 20's, but much like bathing and combing my hair- It gets done only when the mood strikes me. Sometimes I'm squeaky clean and have shiny, bouncy hair for weeks, sometimes I look like I spent the last week sleeping in a lice-infested monkey cave.

I wondered what I'd look like when I get really, really old. You know- like, 50. (Kidding! Kidding!)

But seriously- if the booze, Velveeta and Doritos don't strike me down in the near future and I actually make it to 80-90, how bad is it going to be? I found an image generator that gave me an idea:

Before:


50-60 years from now:

Yikes.

Happy Wednesday, my aging little lice monkeys. Happy Wednesday.