Seeing things.

The painting is all done, the drop-cloths folded and put away, etc. Now I just have to clean where we were painting, and move the furniture back when the carpet is done being cleaned, and put together the new bookshelves, and put the books back in them, and....

The thing about painting these rooms is that the walls now exist for me. I see them. I enjoy them. Before, they didn't bother me, because I just didn't think of them at all. Of course there were walls--somewhere to hang things, a way to keep snow and rain and fauna out. But they were irrelevant. Now they are relevant in a good way.

This backfired on me when I took the kitchen curtains down to wash them. They are red gingham, and my mom had asked what I really wanted in there, because, "I just can't see you with red gingham." She's been seeing me with red gingham for three and a half years now, but I knew what she meant: they aren't really my style. But while they were still up, they did not register because they are not actively offensive. They're just not me. (Or markgritter. Or timprov. Or missista, even.) But once I took them down and looked out into the green of the backyard without them...oh....

And then I looked at the prospect of ironing the curtains and rehanging them on the curtain rods just to have curtains I didn't really like there, and I just couldn't do it. Brain balked. So I will be shopping for curtain fabric when I can find spare minutes for it, and in the meantime we will look out into the woods behind us even more than we do with curtains on the windows. Because sometimes when you change things you just can't go back to the way things were.

See also: rest of life in various regards.