Life refresh

My husband and I met up with friends in Harlem for dinner. Two of the women, married to each other for decades, had met my husband once before, but the third, the actress daughter of one of the older women, was meeting both of us for the first time. The next day, the actress's mother called me to say. "Don't feel bad because we love you, too, but oh we all three of us fell in love with your husband!" I said, "I don't feel bad! I fell in love with him, too!" When he came home from work, I teased him that he'd completely charmed two older lesbians and a movie star. "As long as I charmed you, too," he said, and this is reason number twenty trillion why I love him.

Now that the man is back in the office three days a week, I've moved back to the desk in the bedroom for work, which means I shall soon have to clear those towers of books and mail to give myself a neat, serene space to think. (I couldn't decide whether I liked the black and white or the color image better, so this post gets both.)

I will order our new living room couches today. I'm doing the thing, ma! I will even get a twenty percent business-owner's discount because of that publishing company my cousin and I started. The benefits of having a lawyer in the family—she officially registered us and now we are a legitimately licensed LLC (as in "little little company"). Because of pandemic related supply chain issues, the furniture won't be delivered until late January. I'm okay with that. Perhaps I will get to decluttering in the meantime.

My plan is to swap out the red curtains with ivory ones that are washed and folded in my linen closet, or maybe get new curtains altogether, in a lighter shade. The whole object is to make the room brighter and airier. I've also been on the hunt for a new area rug, but haven't happened on any I absolutely love. I did this week run across an inexpensive one that I did not mind. On impulse I bought it. I'd intended to wait till the new couches arrived to get a new rug, but our current one, having served twenty years of hard use, needs to be retired in the worst way. The new rug, which arrives tomorrow, is a loose commitment, enough to feel as if I have begun the upgrade endeavor. If I end up not liking this rug with the new couches, it was cheap enough that I can move it to another room or give it someone who will love it, and get something else. How privileged I am to be able to think this way. I do not take it for granted.