A Lived In Home

Project 365, Day 61/365

If you took a snapshot of the room you’re in right now, of your current vantage point, what would it tell a stranger who looked at it, a decade later? What would you want it to say? While I’m not entirely sure what the image up there says to you, I’ll tell you what it says to me.

This is my nightly view. Heck, this is my daily view. Where I sit down a little before 9 am every morning until around 6 pm working for someone else, get up, have dinner with my husband, then sit right back down to work for myself. I took this photo moments ago on my phone, and plopped it right into this post. No moving anything. No Photoshop. Just real life.

That hastily thrown computer charger is a daily ritual I’ve grown to hate. My work laptop and my personal laptop do not have the same charging port, one being newer than the other, so every morning, I unhinge the power box of my personal computer to reconnect my work computer, and every night, I do it in reverse.

The leather makeup bag peeking out from behind my laptop screen is like a 2020/2021 Zoom call time capsule. Inside, if you looked, you’d find lip balm, lip tint, dry shampoo, mascara, undereye concealer, and a variety of other things I may need to grab at a moment’s notice when the dreaded “hey can I video chat you real quick” Slack message comes in.

I see the remains of mine and Charles’ latest TV session—still watching Modern Family—and the pile of pillows and blankets I use to position my body just so to tolerate it. It’s also clear I haven’t fluffed my down cushions in quite some time. ::shrug::

A robe from my morning graces the edge of the chaise lounge; I used it at lunch as a blanket because I got cold.

There’s that white box on the floor that frankly has been there since just a few weeks after we all got sent home last March. It arrived in the mail for my husband from his office. Evidently, he needed whatever was in there (for the record, I’ve never seen him even open the lid).

Back to that computer charger…you see the black thing draped over a spare dining chair? That’s a salon cape I bought when I realized I wouldn’t be returning to an actual hairdresser in way longer than I’d be comfortable not tending to my scraggly hair. A handful of YouTube videos and a scissor kit later, and I’ve cut my own hair rather successfully to the point that I question how much I’m willing to spend for a simple trim or layering ever again. But right now, it’s still there from the haircut I actually gave to Charles last weekend. Not only did I learn to cut my hair, but I learned to cut his. I’m mentally dusting my shoulders off. And yes, it’s still hanging there because I haven’t been mindful enough to put it back where it belongs.

I can see the stack of records I bought for Charles (and myself) this past Christmas. So many great hours have come from that. Same with the record player atop that console there. I placed it there Christmas Day—”Just for now,” I said on December 25, 2020—and frankly, it’ll probably still be there December 25, 2021.

And there’s that little white elephant on the long console cabinet under my dining room windows. I bought that for Charles at the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, my first trip to Europe. I took it alone for work and was so nervous. There would be a few days before I met up with the group I’d be traveling with to Maastricht in Limburg, and I didn’t know what to expect. I could look back at that 26-year-old and know that she was a baby. I’d grow to be more comfortable traveling by myself than with others over the course of more trips abroad I can count on both hands. A small smile just crept up on the right side of my face as I wrote that.

Well, would you look at that…a stack of tax documents waiting for Charles and me to be responsible adults. I put them together between those books on the console as they came in so I didn’t run around on weekend trying to find them all in the places I swore I or Charles would remember. The little short white vessel to the left of my squiggly vase is something I’ve been using a lot lately. My now dear friend Jess, who I used to work with at Emily Henderson’s blog, got that for me as a secret Santa gift the first holiday season I spent there. It’s full of papers with little inspirational notes on them. Things like “you’re a superstar!” “your hair looks really good today!” “believe in yourself” put a little pep in my step when I walk by and decide to rustle around for one, read it, smile, put it back, and move on.

Ah, and my massage gun that Charles decided to use the other day. He left it on top of the record player, because of course…why wouldn’t you do that? I used it after him and put it right back…on top of the record player.

What you don’t see in this photo is what I hear. The dog across the street howling. I don’t normally hear it, but something must have stirred it this evening. And it sounds like they just launched a helicopter…a regular occurrence in the City of Angels. If anyone ever releases a soundtrack of Los Angeles, surely a chopper would be the percussion section in the background of every song.

There are a handful of other random things thrown about. We tidied this weekend until the point where we got bored and wanted to do something else, and this is what remains. I don’t mind it. It’s a sign of life. As much as I’d love to live in a home where everything was always in place, it’s a pipe dream. The truth is, I can be a bit messy sometimes, until I can’t take it anymore and then go to town, scrubbing dust off baseboards and blinds, steaming velvet, and grout. I am who I am.

It’s the view from where I’m currently seated, right this second, as if I lent you my eyeballs just now. It shows signs of a home someone is actively living in. The walls and roof that have been our shelter for nearly 52 weeks. 50 weeks longer than we originally thought we’d be in here, existing in this new world. Yeah…I’m not ready to go down the “year-in-the life-of-COVID” retrospective just yet.

That’s all, really…

Happy lillördag, and see you tomorrow, friends!