Ready for insulation

I'm also ready for my nervous breakdown. I don't know why, but this upgrade-the-electrical-and-insulate-the-house project has broken me. Oh wait, I know why: it's really freaking expensive and disruptive. Again, I would never survive a full-scale remodel.

I'm going to apologize in advance for how whiny I'm being. Break out your tiny violins.

I mentioned a while back that Greg was going to invest in the house and pay for electrical upgrades and insulation, but that changed. Everything is fine with the two of us but it left me scrambling to apply for financing and it annihilated my savings to pay the electrician. As expected, everything took a bit longer than expected, if that makes sense.

The financing took place with Umpqua Bank with a really obnoxious man who kept asking, "No husband? You're doing this by yourself?" Then he slowly explained how a checking account works and what would happen if I "just had to have that diamond ring" and overdrafted my account. I am not making this shit up.

Have I mentioned that I've been having insomnia so I cut alcohol out of my diet? It's like I'm not thinking sometimes.

Anyway. Our electrician finished all the work in the attic! Instead of wires hanging out of our living room ceiling we have this super cheap Ikea fixture.

I'm not sure this is an upgrade.

I want something beautiful and dangling in here eventually but I have no money right now. So a cheap Ikea fixture it is! Yay, throwaway culture. The good news is that my electrician redesigned the wiring so things make a modicum of sense. Everything's up to code! If we die in a house fire it probably won't be due to sketchy wiring!

I also had him put in a new receptacle in the hallway so we can better see how badly we need to vacuum.

I grabbed these $39 schoolhouse fixtures from Lamps Plus, then went into a shame spiral over how they were made in China and I should have bought real Schoolhouse Electric fixtures and supported a local company.

We really need to vacuum.

Then Greg came out and said, "I think the scale is wrong and they're too big for the space," which made me start worrying about that. But you know what? I'd rather they be too big than too small. And everyone is going to be distracted by the fact that we need to vacuum so badly in here, and then they'll be noticing that our rug is the wrong length for the hallway. So it doesn't matter.

If you need me I'll be here, waiting for my waaahmbulance and reminding myself that things could be worse. I'm not destitute, nor do I live in a country where I could be punished for being a woman and driving a car. I can put up with stupid loan officers. Also: my mother sent me this:

Reference

She's the best.

I have expensive taste

I feel like my house reflects me as a person, in that I clean up okay but I'm always lacking a bit of polish. I'll get all dressed up for work and notice that my shoes need to be polished or that I have threads hanging off of my crappy old purse. My house is lacking in finishing details like window treatments and area rugs. 

You know why? Those things are freaking expensive. It doesn't help that I always fall in love with the expensive ones. But it makes me feel like I'm pretending as an adult to have bare floors. I may be 35 and own a house but nobody's buying it because we don't have a rug in the bedroom.

Though someone did call me "ma'am" the other day and I died a little inside.

Every year, like clockwork, my focus turns from gardening to the interior of the house. Right now I'm obsessed with rug hunting. We have two area rugs in the house, one in the living room:

And the shitty indoor/outdoor rug from my reveal, which now lives in the basement:

I found the perfect rug for our bedroom, for the low, low price of $1685 at Schoolhouse Electric. It's soft, it's not made of polypropylene, and it's not a trendy style that I'll hate in two years. It's so pretty. 

Image: Walton handwoven llama rug from Schoolhouse Electric

Come ON, that thing is sexy! And it would look great in our bedroom! (And maybe I'd throw one of those army blankets across the end of the bed. And now that I'm staring at this picture I want to swap out those nightstands. And the lamps. Hmm.) Someone help me convince Greg that we should buy this, should it ever go on sale.

Or maybe I'll keep the heat off in the morning this winter and he'll convince himself.