Making Good

Y'know how sometimes you say something, or write something, and you don't know where it came from or where you're really going with it but it sounds so right you just had to say it? Okay, yeah, that was my last post. When I wrote it, I didn't know what it actually meant - all I could think of at the moment I typed it was the fact that I had a houseful of family on their way over for "second Christmas" (for the ones who weren't here for the first) and I wanted, I needed, a theme for the year. That's what came through, and it sounded fantastic in my head, y'know? But ... how?

Then, like a yeasty bread dough, it grew. While the Big Lug and I celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary, while I cleaned and taught a long weekend - when I wasn't even looking - it grew. I punched it down when I could, muttering "that can't be right," but it kept coming. My last posts, about the Deadlies and regret, began to swirl inside it like cinnamon and brown sugar. I shoved again (no, no, no, not that) but it just kept growing, laughing at my resistance with little bursts of fragrant promise. Frightening. Absurd. Seductive. Impossible.

It was like getting locked inside a horror-movie Cinnabon store - I fought and I tried to shape it or resist, but I couldn't help it. I caved.

2009. The year that Bunny and the Big Lug get a Home. For free.

If you just rolled your eyes at the seeming anticlimax or frowned in puzzlement at the duh quality of my big announcement, then you haven't been paying attention: Fifty-year-old house. Original cabinetry and scratchy laminate countertop. Original bathroom plumbing and fixtures (mostly - pink in one, mint green in another, baby blue in the half). Original wiring (by original owner). Leaky basement. Small, boxy rooms. Toilet bowl of a market.

All-thumbs, terrified-of-failure Bunny. Would-rather-eat-nails-than-show-the-world-her-incompentence Bunny. Do-as-I-say-not-as-I-(don't)-do Bunny.

Yeah, it was that last one that proved I have to do it this way, that I must take this particular leap forward, and now. In part because there's not a lot of travelling (for treasure hunting) in my future, but mostly because ... well, we hear that our house is our biggest investment, and we know that it should be a place that we love to live in, but, truthfully, my own words in recent weeks told me that the Big Lug and I have not done well on either front. Of course there were reasons (aren't there always?) - at first we didn't have to money to fix it up (we said). Then we didn't have the time (uh-huh). And now ... now the outdated everything is kind of ... well, just a view we've allowed ourselves to get used to because we are too cheap and too lazy to do anything about it.

"See Ms. (future homebuyer), I'm sure you'll get used to it, too. Oh, we understand we're getting peanuts compared to the cozy, warm, HGTV-ready houses in our area. Why should we care? We're only retiring ..."

Oh, I'll still work hard to win, steal, earn, inherit, and find (especially find) my treasures, if only because it's now a habit I wouldn't break even if I could. But in the (truly) absurd flash of inspiration that day I realized that, like so many other things I simply accepted before this quest, the familiar, easy view I'd allowed myself of our biggest single asset has been like a grain of sand beneath my skin for a very long time, itching and annoying me.

Last year, I cleared our house significantly, cleaned it (keeping it - for me - pretty uncluttered and dirt-free), and began to fill it with things I Love instead of only things I Could (and in the process discovered they can actually be both). This year the entire place will become more than just four walls and a roof because we deserve better than this. And if I have to curbside shop, and barter, and watch craigslist like a hawk because the only thing I can afford to risk right now is my comfort zone and my fingernails, my overblown self-image and my know-it-all status - my sloth and my pride - well, then, that's the price I'll pay ... somehow ... and I'll pay it with a cinnamon Bun-y grin.

In the kitchen.

With a circular saw.

Oh, God, this is going to be such a train wreck ...