Get the lead out

Was last week the longest week ever? I've had some stuff unrelated to the house or Greg that has left me feeling really blue and I've been moping around the house, watching Greek on streaming rather than grocery shopping or taking pictures of all the things blooming in my garden. Everything is going to be fine but my people are an anxious people and worrying comes too easily to me.

On Saturday we went to an open garden tour hosted by Lance Wright (beautiful!) with Greg's parents and had banh mi at Double Dragon. Then Greg and I finally saw Moonrise Kingdom and grilled in the backyard and I felt fussed over and better than I had all week. Sometimes you just need to be taken care of a little.

I think our day of leisure was restorative because I woke up on Sunday on a mission. Our toilet has been intermittently running for the last three months and it's been driving me crazy . . . so crazy that I've ignored it for three months. But there were strong words every time I heard it running!

I degunkified the flapper and adjusted the balloon arm thingy and our toilet stopped running and my blood pressure is back to normal. It took all of 15 minutes. It was running and driving up our water bill for three months. I'm a little mad at myself for this.

I didn't take pictures of the inside of our toilet. You're welcome.

I also didn't take pictures of our office, an unending source of shame for me. Just picture piles and piles of artwork stacked on the floor, an Ikea desk piled 18 inches high with god knows what, and a bed covered by plant catalogs and nursery receipts.

Greg and I had a lot of artwork between the two of us when he moved in. My artwork is mostly cheap but sentimental prints in Ikea frames. Greg's artwork was more expensive but chosen without much thought. He needed art for his bathroom. "Hey, two sailboats, I'll take it." Boom. Except he paid to have it professionally matted and framed, so it looks way better than my prints, even if we don't really care about sailboats. I don't believe in hanging art that I don't love just like I don't believe in styling rooms with books if you're not a reader. At some point I will convince him to let me move different artwork into his frames, but until then we have sailboats in our entryway. The word sailboat has officially lost all meaning. Sailboats!

We both secretly think sailboating is too much work to be considered fun.

And I took all the big pieces and put them in the freshly painted basement stairwell. I am not a fan of gallery walls but we had a bunch of leftover art and I hate empty space, so there you go. Boom.

Yay, pulp fiction covers!

And then I cleared my desk because we have house guests next month and we have to pretend I don't live like a savage. Greg is super organized and his desk always looks this clear. I like stacks of papers that make my allergies flare up. That cable bill isn't going to lose itself.

So we're practically ready for visitors, I have artwork on every conceivable wall in the house, our toilet doesn't run, and now I'm going to reward myself with a little fretting session. Didn't you hear? The universe could tear itself apart sooner than anyone expected.