Once upon a time, there was a girl who was out looking for herself.
She looked everywhere. She looked back in time.
She looked in her hometown.
She looked in far off places.
And there was a boy who held her hand the whole time.
And he reminded her that she was enough, that she mattered.
And he reminded her, daily, that he loved her.
And, one evening, holding the boy’s hand at the Marina in the picture above, she briefly snapped out of her fragile venture for meaning to see that it was right there, with her, holding her hand, the whole time.
I trimmed back the hedges in the bed in front of our front porch this morning. Prior to trimming, they hedges were taller than the porch railing– that whole brush pile in the walkway is what I cut back. I even toted the brush pile to the street for pickup by myself!
It’s for sure becoming apparent that the state of my self-esteem can absolutely be measured by how well I am tending to my house, or how interested I am in tending to my house.
This morning, despite a late night waiting for Liam to get home, I managed to get Oliver to school, started towels (towels and sheets don’t count toward laundry day), have kept towels going all day so far. I did my morning meditation with my Calm app and did 20 minutes on my stationary bike (20 minutes instead of 30 because I haven’t done it in at least a month and a half and am really out of shape all over again).
It’s time for some serious yard attention now that it is Fall. My goal yet this afternoon is still to get out and mow a section of the yard. But this morning, I managed to trim back those bushes you see in the photo above all by myself. That’s kind of a thing because I normally leave that sort of yard work to Jared– getting me to mow or blow off the driveway is usually cause for celebration enough.
But I care about how our house looks and feels again, and the whole hedge trimming project took about 30 minutes total. I had to come in and rest after, and so here I am writing while I get up my energy to go mow, after having had a snack for lunch.
But here’s the thing: Somewhere along the way in 2010 or so, I just utterly snapped. And I have floundered at times and I have done okay at times, and I have mostly been able to be social when out in public all along.
But inside, I’ve felt defeated. I looked back on my school days both in grade school and high school and undergrad, and I did have quite a bit of academic promise. And then in my early career I had such interesting, impactful employment.
And then, I had a very public episode and, job after job, the career-type promise went away.
And I am doing my best to build back. Looking back now I can see for so many years I was grasping for instant repair.
There is no instant repair for the kinds of trauma and mood issues I’ve dealt with in my life. In fact, I’ve run away from the kinds of healing that would really help, at times.
So here I am, in late 2025, and I realize now that the next perfect job is not going to fix my heartbreak. The latest camera gear is certainly not going to fix my heart. The best thing I can do for myself is remind myself that I am capable. And there’s no better way to do that than to do what needs to be done– what I have been running from– and that is to tend to my home and family.
Aside: waking up this morning with the new sheers was amazing. I was in the bed until 7 and the light was just starting to come up, and the uniform light entering the house, growing little by little as the minutes went by, was balm for my soul. That was exactly what I needed, and I am thrilled with the effect. Letting my body work with the sun is also good for my soul and mental health.
Every day won’t be perfect. I know I have to expect depression to come back with its darkness again.
But it seems to be true: When I want to run from my house, when I want to start over, it’s not really about the house. It’s about myself.
No pretty pictures from the day. This is a photo from 2013, 3 houses ago.
But one night sleeping without coverings on the double doors, and new window treatments are on the way.
I spent the day ironing. Lots and lots of ironing.
But, all the windows have their new treatments. I am happy.
And, all of a sudden, I am re-invested in my house.
And maybe hyped up a little bit that I actually have an interest in (and have completed) a project.
I am so very, relieved to love my house again. It’s been quite a long time.
Today, I feel like I’ve been a good wife and mother.
I worked my tail off today, no joke. I didn’t sit down much.
And, while I was ironing window treatments, I also finished laundry day.
Laundry day doesn’t have to be one day, as Dana from A Slob Comes Clean says. And she’s right.
In our case, laundry day actually wasn’t that bad. It started half-heartedly on Monday since I didn’t think of it until halfway through the morning and only worked on it a little bit (I always like to have laundry day be Monday) and it will end about 10:30 PM tonight, when the last load finishes in the dryer and I am able to get everything put away.
And now I don’t have to think about clothes laundry for the rest of the week.
Sheets will be another thing: I should get all the sheets in the house cleaned sooner than later.
I think tomorrow will be another good run through the floors and putting the clutter in the primary bedroom away.
At some point in the next couple of weeks I have to get to Porter’s room finally.
I was listening to one of the many podcasts I listen to today and somebody said (I cannot remember which podcast) that the state of your home mirrors the state of your mind.
In my case, that’s probably 100% true. There’s lots of dust, and clutter, and dirty laundry and dirty floors in my head, too.
It was a good day. Oliver was inducted into the National Junior Beta Club, and we got to see the live broadcast of the CHS Trojan Band on the Gradick Sports Facebook page when we got home. They did such a great job, like they always do.
It’s harder for me to be charitable about Central, my alma mater. The inside jokes are tired and they are inside jokes from well after my time. It’s hard to feel like an outside as an alum from my own band. But it’s been the case for a decade or more.
I got to meet Oliver’s new girlfriend and family. They seem nice.
Yes, my 6th grader has a girlfriend. *sigh* We managed to skip these things with the big boys, and are still so far even. It’s not even Oliver’s first girlfriend.
I have tried, however, to encourage all of my children to not get into serious relationships until well after high school. I speak from experience on how that can go really, really, really awfully bad. Most of you probably know that story and if you don’t I think I made another post about it here somewhere.
At any rate, I will go to bed tired tonight. And I desperately hope I wake up in such a state that I can do it all over again tomorrow.
This is the only house we have purchased that I actually picked out.
And…..I have struggled mightily with my mental health in this house.
It doesn’t get a great deal of light. Well, I mean, the ginormous living room actually does get great light, but it was outfitted with equally imposing dark royal blue blackout curtains. Here they are, this morning:
And yes….the blue curtains in the living room perfectly matched the shade of the blue valances (and wallpaper) in the dining room.
At least the people who designed our 1994 house, which this is all original to, had stellar taste. Everything still looks fabulous 30 years later.
But….. I struggle mightily with my mental health, which is likely known to you all at this point by now. And when we moved in 2021, we moved from a house that I moderately despised because of its stairs.
But what I loved about that Holmes Drive house was its light. That house had fantabulous light, in both the kitchen and the main living room.
So, this happened today:
The photos are not the greatest representation of how much better the light is in the house– I took them this morning just after taking the curtains down and it was overcast. And I am sort of rebelling against my camera gear at the moment, so all I did was phone photos. I might take better photos once the job is all done.
The dining room photo above is after the work in there too– there were paper shades over the windows in there prior to about an hour ago.
If I had my way, we would be team bare windows in the entire house. I am not much worried about privacy.
But, we are taking down the paper shades throughout the house, in favor of brand new sheers. They arrive tomorrow, so tomorrow’s project will for sure be taking down the eight other shades in the windows of the house.
The paper shades were my solution to the extremely off-white, very thin metal blinds that came with the house. I hated them and they came down as soon as possible.
And they have served their purpose, and we certainly got what little money we put into them out of them.
But many of them in the boys’ rooms (and the ones in the dining room, actually), had been torn by the cats, and Oliver’s in particular are in very bad shape because Mow, his cat’s scratching post is right beside one window and she has gotten it all furry and bent out of shape.
So, I will not be sorry to see the shades go in favor of sheers.
And honestly, I’d worry more about security, but our alarm systems, both furry and actual, are fantastic.
I just desperately need natural light.
The good news is, taking down the curtains in the living room has made me not feel like the room needs to be painted quite so much. I do love a basic white wall.,
And we are not taking down the hardware fast, as I am keenly aware that the blackout curtain do actually do quite a lot of insulation in the winter.
But…that is when I need the light the most.
Regardless: I feel better about my house, and I feel better about my life. Which makes me more invested in both.
