The Hundred Years' War

Or, How I Can't Seem to Decorate My House.

Honestly, sometimes I feel like I'm lacking some critical girl-gene. I look at fabric swatches and wallpaper samples and furniture catalogues and instead of feeling a huge rush, I feel hugely intimidated.

No, more than that: I feel a surge of desperate frustration coupled with a sense of impending doom.

Right now I am living in what still feels like someone else's house and although we've put paint on some of the walls and most of our furniture lives here now, none of it seems to quite fit like it did in the old house. I am in the nether hell of having to find a new couch and chair for the family room so that the denim one (which is only 3 years old) can go in the basement because it's just a skosh too big for the family room.

I thought I'd found the perfect sofa: right size (about 10" smaller than our current one)right style (no back cushions for the kids to smash down) right color (came in a lovely carmel tan chenille herringbone that is about 2 shades darker than our walls). Then my sister, who shall hereafter be known as the Destroyer of Dreams, told me that with three kids and our future dog, chenille would make about as much sense as family night at the opera. The couch would, she swore, be rubbed bald in about a year. And naturally, I can't get it in any other fabric. Just the chenille. Just that perfect shade of butter soft chenille that will never survive the onslaught of my semi-feral children.

So, seething with frustration, I am at square one. Again.

The problem is that I have trouble committing. If I buy the chesterfield-style roll arm, I can't also have the flirty, slipcovered french settee. And yes, I like them both. And if I get the big farmhouse table, I can't also have the sleek, duncan phyfe reproduction with empire chairs. It boils down to this: I don't want to marry my furniture, I just want to date it.

See? Lacking the girl gene. Sadly, I still have the gene that is screaming at me to do something with the house, so I keep at it, in spite of feeling wholly inadequate. This weekend I am going to make myself crazy and go couch shopping some more. And maybe even order a new table. Why not? I haven't had a panic attack in at least 2 months. Time we livened up the joint.