We've just recently passed the first "monthaversary" of our marriage, and looking back on it, we can track ways our marriage has grown and developed in a variety of areas: how we relate to each other, how we spend our time, and just the natural progress of making this huge life change more and more normal. In today's post, we would like to share with you one of the more physical manifestations of our progress: home decorating.
Some disclosure here: this is a difficult one for me (Arthur). Home decor and style are just two things that I don't in any sense understand. I do like to think that I can think of efficiency (this is how I make a living), but colors, contrast, everything else is just a mystery. To me, for there to be any logical consistency to these things, these individual variables should be able to have a numerical value assigned to them, loaded appropriately into a matrix, and using proper manipulation derive what individual elements should be placed where.
Sadly, dear reader, this is not the case. My ideas for how to arrange a house are so wacky (apparently), that my lovely Alex hardly knows whether or not to treat these suggestions as serious ones or not. Hence, we do not have our kitchen utinsels hanging from pegboards (it works great in a shop), we still have cabinet doors on our cabinets (still adding a step in getting anything out), we do not store our pots or pans on the stove top (why not just store them were you're going to use them? To be fair, Alex does sometimes use the extra work space, but still.), and that's just the kitchen!
To further illustrate the point, before Alex and I were married and I was living here alone, we had a bridal shower. My skills and a home decorator were considered so poor, I was explicitly told not to put anything away, and I lived with a pile of stuff in the middle of the living room floor until Alex could visit and could start finding places for everything.
But the greatest flurry of activity came the weekend Alex's parents came to help out. Alex's mother apparently lives and breathes decorating. Alex and I were flummoxed by all the stuff we had to place, but she stepped in and apparently could just see how to pull everything together.
What ensued could best be described as a tornado rampaging through your house, except instead of chaos it happened to place everything neatly and what I can only assume is its proper place. Alex's father and I used this time to assemble a bookshelf and a clothes rack, so we were, perhaps mercifully, left out of the wake of this storm.
When the in-laws departed, I was stunned. First, there was the result. Alex and her mom did a great job, but what really shocked me was the energy displayed in that flurry of activity. I stayed mostly clear of their activities, but the little that I was present just completely wore me out. I'm a fairly strong and decently active young man, and this, um, slightly older woman just completely outdid me. Alex enjoys distance running, and once took me on a seven mile run. What that run did to me physically, Alex's mom did mentally.
Anyway, all this to say that a month into marriage I think we can say that we finally have our home mostly set up.
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