NESTING

Four views of the living room in its current configuration

Being diagnosed with breast cancer is a wake up call.  Whatever the outcome of this particular series of medical procedures, it is clear that I am approaching the end of my life, and it's time to get serious about my bucket list, those things that I've always intended to do but have never gotten around to. As I've mentioned before, I have never been a nester, never created orderly and attractive living spaces.  So that's one thing I'm interested in accomplishing.

When I got the love seat and placed it in the middle of the room, where it had long been in my imagination, it didn't look right.  I had thought it would divide the room into separate living and dining areas, which it did, but both areas were cramped and awkward.  And so the bookcase got moved to the back wall and the love seat to the side wall and the result seems much better.  Also, after carrying them about in boxes for 30 years, I finally took the loose watercolors to Aarons and had them framed.  Linda was here last weekend and got them all hung above the wainscotting.  Furthermore, I have accepted that I will never be a house cleaner and have hired one.  She comes every other week and scrubs all the floors and the bathroom fixtures.  That makes an enormous difference, not only in the floors (which don't look that bad after all) but in the motivation it provides to keep things picked up and dusted.

I also hired a landscaper to design the backyard, which was awful.  The plants that had been there had died for lack of water, there never had been much grass, plastic bordering material was torn up and scattered about, and there was a makeshift fence of chicken wire and what seemed to be the sides of an old crib around one section. The young man, Domingo, who runs Rio Vista Landscaping had been recommended by Sam Richards, the real estate agent who rented the house. Domingo thought there was not much hope for grass as long as Amber would be out there and suggested crushed rock with a border of plants.  Here are the results:

The little plants around the edges should get a lot bigger

Amber digs little holes in the crushed rock, so I'm not sure how this will work out, but so far I've been able to repair most of the damage by smoothing the rock out with a broom.  Also I water the plants and the rock surface every evening.  Domingo says the surface will become harder, and perhaps the novelty will wear off for Amber so she will stop digging.  Meanwhile it is a very great improvement and quite a pleasant space.

I have already done the traveling and living in other countries, have been up in a balloon in Luxor, snorkeled in the Yucatan, travelled through the Andes from Chili to Argentina, gone white water rafting in Alaska...I'm glad I did that sort of thing and now I'm glad to have a chance to do a bit of nesting.