Boring Rainbow

I recently went to visit distant family in New York. Well, once-distant as I point-blank asked them if we could please be closer. I can’t tell you how much I fell in love with these people. They are truly wonderful human beings.

And their homes were equally wonderful and beautiful. I sat outside in their yard for a full day, sitting by a lake, playing with the dogs. I visited a cousin’s home in the city. And another cousin’s outside of the city. And we connected, like family.

And one of these beautiful, wonderful people said that they will come and visit me one day soon.

And that’s where I was like, “You can’t see my house.”

See, my house…

Sometimes I feel like everything that I care about, everything beautiful, gets broken.

Add to that two exhausted parents, puppies who destroy things with abandon, adults with no skills for the finer art of interior design, and old furniture that’s been gathered from the cobwebbed corners of the world, hobbled together like scraps into a shoe that works but gives you blisters. That’s kind of my house.

For example, the stairs with the huge hole in the carpet. That’s why we don’t have friends over. The kitchen with the paint that goes up the walls and finished there, never making it to the ceiling. The new floors that we put in and the baseboards that we left out, leaving exposed wall for… eight years and counting.

The beige everything. Beige and tan counters, horrible tiles on the backsplash (dear God). The wooden floor that was destroyed by the back door while we were on vacation and other people were loving taking care of our pets. We never found out what happened (we asked).

I literally walk through every room of the house and there is no room that I love or even like. No room that feels like me.

And when I got home from New York, I was like, “This has to change.”

I know that influencer’s lives aren’t real, and that it’s all for show, but this one particular video struck a chord with me. Well, two. In one, the influencer says something like, ‘people say not to decorate your house because you need to think about it’s saleability after you leave it,’ and she was like, ‘why should I think of imaginary strangers instead of making a home?’

And in the other, well, the shot opens with her house looking like a fairy tale castle. I’ll never be able to refind these for you but, dear God, they were beautiful.

And so, you know, why can’t we?

Why can’t we, bit by bit, change the way we live?

Paint over the scrapes. Put up some wall art. Change the coat hanger I never liked liked and see every single day, hundreds of times?

Maybe we can make something pretty here.

And maybe I can just write and share.

That’s why this is Boring Rainbow. One post really might be “today I painted over the scratches in the window sill.” And one post might be :::dreaming of doing this now::: “today I created a creative reading nook for my son.”

It can be all the things. And art, and photography, and life.

All the things.

Sending you all the love in the world,

-P