Home Improvement Freedom

It's another Sunday evening after a fun weekend and, as always, I'm wishing I had an extra day off.

I even had a long weekend this time around. I took Friday off to just have a day off. I ended up spending a large portion of it at the car dealership getting my car serviced and also finding out that I desperately needed new tires but, even so, it was nice to have the day off.

The pups and I headed up to my parents for the weekend after the car dealership finally released me. We hadn't been up to Indiana for a while and I thought it'd be nice to have a low-key weekend with my parents. It turned out to be a fun weekend. We went to the Home and Garden Show which I thought was fun. It was a little crowded but it was the first time I've been to a show like that since I've owned a house. It's fun to realize that if I wanted new windows, I could get them someday or if I wanted to re-landscape my garden, I have the freedom to do that.

It was an interesting exposition. I didn't buy much although I did snag some Blue Spruce trees for a very good price. My dad purchased two rubber brooms which he likes to use to clean the snow off his and my mother's car in the winter. He gave one to me to carry around the show so I felt much like that man in the American Gothic painting who's standing next to his wife holding the rake. I held the broom like the rake in that picture. My dad and I got a lot of comments about our broom. Apparently, not everyone carries rubber brooms around an entire Home and Garden show. To make matters more amusing, my mother bought one of those microfiber broom/mop things so by the time we were finished, all three of us had a broom of some sort. I feel like we should have done some type of Mary Poppins "Chim Chimeree" dance or something.

After the show, I had the luxury of spending the evening with my sister. We decided to have a girls night out, something we literally haven't done in years. We've gone to dinner a couple of times but never really out to do more than that. We decided to do dinner and a movie. We saw "Just Go With It"- the Adam Sandler/Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy. It turned out to be much more amusing and sweet than I thought.

It's nice to get to hang out with my sister. She recently graduated from nursing school and she has a four-year-old daughter so she hasn't had a lot of time to be social. Thus, it was nice to be able to liberate her for the evening.

All in all, it was a nice, relaxing, family-filled weekend. The dogs, of course, had the greatest time at their 'grandparents'. Sookie and Rory adore their garden- it's huge and there's a ton of nooks and crannies to explore. They're also very fond of my parents so it's nice to be able to reunite dog and human once in a while.

It was also a productive weekend. I've decided exactly how to redecorate my hideous 1970's style family room in Tuscan Villa style and, in addition, I had a rather productive trip to Lowe's with my dad who helped me figure out the mysteries of bathroom remodeling. I think if I do it slowly, I can get my bathroom looking just how I like.

It's so nice to be able to have the freedom to redecorate and remodel. I dwelt in apartments long enough to feel the frustration of not being able to change the minor little annoyance and the big ones. My last apartment in L.A. had an absolutely terrible water leakage problem when it rained. Most of the time in L.A., it doesn't rain so it wasn't too much of a problem for a while. Then, when the rainy season hit and we had torrential rain, I began to notice my bedroom carpet was getting rather wet. It turned out that the water was seeping up through the ground and by the time it was done, my closet and bedroom became very mildewed, smelly and disgusting. Our landlord's solution was to throw a few sandbags in front of the leak and put some Killz mildew killer on the walls.

Also, in the same apartment, the ceiling above my roommate's shower ended up caving in, The landlord never did finish patching it up. We were glad it didn't happen while my roommate was in the shower.

The same apartment had terrible ant infestations when it got hot. You can see why it got annoying. We fixed as many of the small things that went wrong as we could but unfortunately, we had to rely on the landlord for many repairs.

So, having my own home seems like quite a lovely thing. Granted, it means I'm financially responsible for everything that goes wrong/needs to be replaced/needs an upgrade but it also means it's mine to fix/replace/upgrade. I like that feeling. I like to be able to paint the walls, get rid of the mustard yellow carpet and change the faucets.

I also like being able to simply wander around Home and Garden Shows and Lowes and know that I have the complete freedom to do what I like to my home if I have the finances and resources.

I love that feeling and much as I love weekends and the nice thing is that even if the weekend is over, that feeling will stay.

Maybe that will help fight of the Mondays a little. We'll see.

Happy Monday!