dark

It is so dark in this house and it drives me crazy.  I crave light all the time.  This house is a 60s-style ranch house, single story, long and plain.  Not a lot of windows.  Close to its nieghbors and shadowed by them.  There are sunbeams in the guest room and the small room off the kitchen for an hour or so on clear mornings, but then that's it.  Indirect light for the rest of the day.  The living room is shadowed by a porch that turns the room into a dungeon all day.  We are talking about installing solar tubes in the master bedroom (which is actually my studio - why waste the big room for sleeping in?), but not yet.  In the mean time, I fight with a work table surrounded by lamps to make enough light to see, but they create glare and annoying shadows.  To make the house light situation worse, the ancient and decrepit original lighting fixtures are starting to give up, one by one.  First, one of the three bulbs in the kitchen started flickering, then stopped working.  Then another one joined it.  Then the entry-way light went out.  Then one of the two in the hall bath - not a big deal there, as we don't use that bathroom much.  Then one of the bulbs in the master bath.  Of course it had to be the one close to the mirror where I do my face and hair.  At this point, half the lights in the house are out.  And we don't want to fix them until we get the house appraised and decide if we are going to be able to buy it or not.  And we're lagging on the things we need to do before we can make that decision.  Lisa took the phone number of the appraiser to work today, so hopefully she'll get a chance to call.  We need to contact a mortgage broker and see what kind of loan we can qualify for.  It is scary and overwhelming, and we are procrastinating.

I think that's really what is irritating me about the house situation at this point.  The limbo of not knowing if we are going to continue to rent or really invest in this place.  It is a dump.  We know it.  Our landlord, isn't very interested in maintaining the place.  Nice guy, crappy landlord.  We know all the things we'd fix or improve if this hourse were ours.  And he'd be happy to sell to us, and would probably give us a deal.  Because it is a dump, we believe we can actually afford it.  And could fix it up and sell it and earn some money on it.  I'm so tired of being a renter.  But knowing what I want to change and not doing it is increasingly frustrating.  It goes against my grain.  Once I decide to change something, I want to just do it.  I don't like to make a decision and then sit on it.  I have plans for the studio, the garden, both bathrooms, the porch.  I don't even want to think about ways to make the kitchen better, because then the ugly wallpaper, peeling linoleum and ugly cabinets would really get to me.  I have to just not see it, so I can ignore it.  Of course, the lack of lighting is helping that.

I've been reading Tara's blog recently and was struck by a comment she made about how she intentionally only brings beautiful things into her home.  That's what I want. Only beautiful things in our home.  I want to clear out the things that no longer appeal to me, that no longer have a place in our lives.  I want to make the place we live beautiful, and not just something we put up with.  I want spaces for us to live in.  Not just exist.