home dreams

for a long time now, i've been daydreaming about owning a home. and not just owning, but renovating--buying a lovely old victorian or craftsman house and restoring it, while updating the kitchen to be the stuff of our fantasies. (lofty dreams, for someone who's not even out of college yet!) and last night these home dreams went beyond daydreams and infiltrated my REM cycles as well. =)

but we are just lowly students, renting a slightly-too-small apartment (though with a very generous kitchen!) and moving in six months to one side of the country or the other (still undetermined). so no home renovation and design in our foreseeable future. =/

however, since i have this itch i'm really wanting to scratch and because i'm a grown, married woman now and i should probably stop stashing stuff in my parents' house, i decided that i am going to help my 15-year-old sister E redo her bedroom. but what does this have to do with my stuff? well, her room was my room until i left for college--we shared it for several years as well--so it's currently the staging place for a ton of my things i haven't used in five years as well as nearly everything she has ever owned and outgrown in that time.

it'll be a good project, i think. we'll be purging a lot of stuff, which will open up a lot of space in the room. it's have a bunk bed in there for a decade, so taking that down will free up the vertical and make it feel so heavenly, we might just hear angels singing. =) also, i think it will be fun to be intentional with what gets put back in the room, and how a few color choices and things like that will (hopefully!) tie everything together and it will be an intentional, cohesive space that reflects E, rather than a haphazard collection of random posters and hand-me-down furniture and all that.

particularly satisfying is making the mock-ups. thanks to ikea's room planner, i've made 3D models of what the room could look like in various furniture arrangements, and then i can play with those in photoshop to try out different colors, snag pictures of items (lamps, rugs, curtains, chairs, whatever) online and put them in, all sorts of stuff. of course, it's not going to be perfect, but it's great fun, and (so i'm telling myself) very useful. =)

life on hold

it's not that i dislike waiting.
i'm definitely more about enjoying the journey than getting to the destination.
it just feels like my life is on hold while the world around me keeps moving.
i'm a placeholder, marking time
until six months roll around and i can fall in step again.
i'm waiting for something to make one week different from the next.
i'm waiting for anything i've done to be meaningful.
all around me, friends and family are actively seeking, creating, planning for
what comes next
or they have it already in their grasp.
but not me.
i'm waiting for my future to find me,
sitting here waiting every day because i've already done everything i can
to secure it
but it isn't secured.
waiting for the letter that hasn't come,
the phone call that hasn't rung,
waiting for something that will validate
all the years i've been preparing
and all this time that i've spent
waiting.