home redecorating

I have been gently urging (okay, arm-twisting) Luke to fix up his condo since pretty much our first date. Let me clarify that the decor of said condo is really none of my business. I do not live there, nor do I pay the mortgage and condo fees. I am perfectly aware that I should keep my mouth shut and allow the poor guy to dwell peacefully in his disheveled bachelor pad, where he seemingly got along just fine for five years without my "help."

But that's clearly not realistic, is it? Just as the full moon begets the werewolf, walking through the threshold of this condo transforms me from my usually disorganized self into a less-apt but just-as-anal Martha Stewart wannabe, eyeing each closet and wall with a burning need to organize and decorate.

Luke has been accomodating of if a bit anxious about the whole Martha/Mr. Hyde deal. We succeeded in repainting the living room, dining room, and hallway with good results, replacing the horror show of pumpkin-and-gold sponge paint and electric-yellow crayon with more soothing green, blue and brown. I also recaulked a few windows, rearranged his furniture, fixed a couple of lights so that they could be turned off without unscrewing the burning hot bulb with one's hand, and sewed some curtains with the help of my patient mother (thanks mom).

The problem with the new paint was that one (one being me) now noticed the ugly furniture, particularly the stained green armchair that looked like someone with greasy hair had died in it and the scratchy blue-and-white couch, a hand-me-down from a friend's relative, that left marks on my face after a nap and did not go with anything. I largely obscured the former with a quilt made by Luke's mother. The latter, however, continued to goad me.

Frugal Luke has never purchased a piece of furniture in his life--unless a bike trainer qualifies as furniture--and refers to things inherited because his kin did not want them in their own homes as "family heirlooms". Thus a new couch was out of the question. I began to frequent the Target website, fantasizing about the perfect couch cover, a piece of fabric that could turn the scratchy behemoth into something almost tasteful. After scrolling through pages of loose-fitting waffle weave, I found it. Brown, non-scratchy, and snug-fitting--it hardly even looked like a couch cover. The problem was that it was not cheap.

I dragged Luke to Target on the pretense of shopping for a new board game. "Let's just walk this way...." and suddenly we were in the home decor section. "Oooh, this is nice. What do you think?" Luke rejected the couch cover out of hand. He was not about to spend $100 on a couch cover. "But it's the nicest couch cover I've ever seen! And it's only ten per cent of the price of a new couch!" My arguments were to no avail. We left the store with me casting wistful backward glances toward the slipcover aisle.

As the days went by, I could not shake my couch cover obsession. My friend Laura suggested a stop at Target after the gym, and I found myself again in the home decor section, clutching the plastic-wrapped bundle to my chest. I told my hands to return it to the shelf, but with a mind of their own, they instead placed it in the cart.

On a Tuesday, after Luke left for work, I retrieved the couch cover from the trunk of my car and carefully secured it over my sofa-nemesis. It fit perfectly. I left the condo and waited to see what Luke would say. On the phone that evening, however, he didn't mention it. I started to worry that I had passive-agressively overstepped my bounds. He must be really ticked off at me if he's not even going to mention it!

When Thursday came and went with nary a word about the couch cover, I was really worried. I resolved never again to interfere with other people's home decor. On Friday evening we went to the condo. I moved some of Luke's things off the couch and sat down. "Hey," he said. "Did you come over and put that on there today?" The fact that he managed to co-exist with a mysteriously-brown couch for three days without even noticing seems revealing, somehow. But I'm happy every time I get to lounge on it and watch TV without getting tell-tale couch marks on my face.

Weaving workshop

Last weekend I attended a weaving workshop given by my mom at Conner Prairie, the historical museum near Indianapolis where she works. It was a lot of work, but now I have a beautiful wool scarf made from yarn naturally-dyed by my mom and her colleagues on the prairie. Now I have to persuade Luke that he wants to let me turn his guest room into a loom room.