Full Circle

I had an itch to see my house today, you guys.  I clearly don't hold back from stalking the house, but mostly I limit my hovering to drive-bys.  In one of today's slow, creepy, drive-bys, I saw a big box in the front yard, and after a moment's consternation guessed that they finally brought my bathtub.  I've been dying a little, since, to run in and check it out, but I didn't really get a chance during the day today and was waiting until after the kids' bedtime to go visit.

Imagine my grouchiness, if you will, when my husband came home from work and said that the keys in the lockbox were missing and he couldn't get in to the house.  It's happened before that someone pocketed the keys for the evening, and it's not really a big deal, except that I wanted to see my bathtub RIGHT NOW.  Like the stubborn goat I am, I went to the house anyway and scowled at the empty lockbox.  Then I figured out how to get into my house.  I'm not going to tell you how, but I'll assure you that I didn't break anything (on the house or myself).  I'll also assure you that my method of entry was not a dignified action for a middle-aged mom, but it was more dignified than the gymnastics I had to do yesterday to slither into our stuffed storage unit to extract the kids' Halloween treat bags.  I'll finally assure you that there was no way I was going to be denied entry to my own house, and that's that.

And y'all, my hijinks and resulting loss of dignity were so worth it.  First of all, I did get to see my BEE-YOU-TEE-FULL bath tub.

Cue angels singing, etc.  I almost didn't come back to the apartment.

So comfy.

Lovely as my awesome bathtub is, it got upstaged tonight.  This is not what had my clapping my hands, jumping up and down, and shrieking a little with delight (alone, in an empty house, deranged fan-girl stye).  Before I tell you what did, we have to go back a little.

Remember this?

When they first started to destruct the house, they uncovered this old wallpaper in the bathroom, and I was so overwhelmed by its awesomeness that I became a little obsessed.  I started googling "pink bird wallpaper" and hunting vintage wallpaper sites, convinced that I needed this in my new house.  I never did find anything even remotely close (probably a blessing that I didn't), but I did come across a zillion "pink bird wallpapers."

I found one I particularly liked, and as I kept searching I found myself coming back, again and again, to this whimsical and happy "Early Bird" pattern.  It wasn't hot pink water birds and giant water lilies, but it spoke to me.  I decided I NEEDED a whimsical and happy wallpaper in my house.  I kept searching, but I knew as I looked that I had found the wallpaper for me.  I finally screwed up my courage to buy it, no mean feat given that I know beans about wallpaper in general, but in the moment of decision, I noticed a tag on the thumbnail of my wallpaper: "No Delivery Outside NL."  NL? I thought.  Dangit.  The Netherlands.  I had become convinced I needed a wallpaper that I'd have to go to Holland to purchase.  I called Holland and spoke to some super-nice Dutch folks, who assured me they were unable to ship to the US.  Thwarted.  At the eleventh hour.  I put it out of my head and started looking for other "pink bird wallpapers."

That wallpaper was meant to be with me and would not be thwarted by anything like the Atlantic ocean, however.  My beloved college roomie's beloved sister is currently living in Holland due to a military posting!  I hatched a plan.

I ordered the wallpaper and sent it to Sista, and she kindly agreed to accept shipment of the wallpaper and send it to me.  No customs issues, no delays, no nothing!  And tonight, you guys, tonight I got undignified and scratched an itch to get inside my house no matter what, and I walked up the stairs and saw this in my laundry room:

There are no pink birds on my wallpaper, but it's pink and it's got birds, and it makes my laundry room just about the happiest place in the entire universe (which is pretty impressive for a laundry room!).

Cue clapping and jumping and shrieking.  This calls for even more than angels singing, but I can't think what that might be.  It's just awesome.

I picked my blue knobs while the wallpaper was still making its trans-Atlantic flight, and I hoped they'd look right with the wee blue birds on all that pink, and oh, it makes my heart happy to see that I think they do.  This looks like a room where I can fold endless boring piles of laundry and still sing.  This looks like a room where I'll want to sit for hours and sew curtains for the roughly 8 million windows in the house.  It looks like a new room with functional plumbing where I won't get whacked with the back door or the pantry door that nonetheless belongs to my sweet old house.  It's worth breaking in, and clapping and singing, and I hope there's a little happiness in the house, too, that it has some pink bird wallpaper again.