It started out simply, as most redecorating projects do.
First it became apparent that the dining room chandelier needed
replacing. Before I knew it my life had spun out of control. I began to realize I desperately needed to
change things around, make a new start. Soon huge tubs of joint
compound appeared menacingly in the foyer where the painter had dropped
them, waiting to be slathered onto peeling walls. Little flecks of white gop started to dot the wood floors each day, and as it turned out the sanding of the
slathered goo really was not as “dust free” and “quiet” as promised.
My eyes burned and spirits sank. The air was thick with paint thinner and the place was turned upside down. I
began to feel listless. I had not left the house for a week as I tried feverishly to clean up the awful sticky dots before collapsing into bed each night. Finally
there came the morning when no workman showed up too early- before I had properly
awoken, before I had gotten dressed or had my coffee- leading to another realization- it was over, done! I was free! I had my house back!- but I was much too exhausted to care.
All this because of a New Year’s resolution to buy a new
rug, instantaneously followed by the horrible truth that the walls needed
refreshing too, and thus the frenzied “brightening up” stage prior to actually making
the new purchase. In the early fall I had begun staring a bit obsessively at that quasi-Aztec,
fading red and gold geometrically patterned rectangle in center of the living room, my gaze fixed on it for months as I bravely tried to convince
myself that this rare item could never be replicated. In my heart though, I knew
that its time on my once shiny, now slightly worn parquet floor was irretrievably
up. Caput. Finished. Finito. Before its expulsion from my life forever I even had begun reminiscing about how
when I first purchased the beloved piece of woolly decor two decades earlier
this now old “friend”- once quite young and frisky- had shed for months like a
puppy that wasn’t quite house broken. The shedding in fact was so profuse that gossamer
puffs of gold and red began to float down the entire length of the hallway
outside my apartment, worse when I vacuumed; it was as if an almost trained,
baby Alaskan Malamute or some such hairy new pet had tried to make it to the
street but failed, finally succumbing to the urge of releasing of a few unfortunate
“drips” along the way. After several weeks the rug finally stopped losing
tufts from its abundant “coat” but during that unfortunate time I scrupulously avoided eye
contact with the neighbors and pretended not to notice anything out of the
ordinary softly blowing out from under my door. . . .
