Does anyone ever really feel like they've "got it"? Or are we all just wandering around, feeling like other people are "there", and we're still sitting on the frat-house sofa?
Let me explain.
Despite being in RSV isolation with Baby M, we have a lot of visitors. We see a nurse and two therapists weekly in our home, and a number of other support people have been by - even one of her doctors makes house calls. This is in addition to the friends and family members who got multiple vaccinations to come hang out with us, and who always bring food.
This means that I feel maybe a little more pressure than most new moms to keep my house clean. For the most part I'm able to let it go. (Dusting? What's that?) I keep things picked up and try to keep the cat hair under control and pretty much ignore any cleaning that requires more than five minutes of my time before I go to bed.
But I'm self-conscious about something else: my furniture.
I have never felt like I had any kind of really great design aesthetic. I am lucky that the previous owners of our house had some nice taste so the rooms are all tastefully painted and ceiling fixtures and window coverings are nice. And it's not like we're sitting on milk crates with a blanket thrown over it, but...well, I have never, ever upgraded any of our furniture. Quite a lot of pieces were found on the street in NYC (pre-bed bug epidemic). Our couch came from Peanut's apartment in New York, where he bought it off the previous tenants who didn't want to move it (It's huge. And comfy. But huge.). I feel like it should be a basement couch, but it's hanging out in my living room for every guest to sit on.
I look at some of my friends whose homes I've been in, and I feel like they've got things together. They have matching furniture sets, or stuff hung on the walls that seems like it was put there intentionally instead of trying to cover up nail holes left by the previous residents. I know that their financial situations aren't much different from ours but somehow they manage to make things look like a home, and not just a bunch of jumbled stuff in a room.
I can go on in that vein for a while, but then I realize that probably someone, somewhere, is looking at my living room and thinking that I look like *I* have it together. Maybe they feel like their Ikea couch has no resale value and isn't that comfortable to sit on. Maybe they are still paying off furniture purchased on credit. Maybe their couch has cat scratches and pen marks that I've just never noticed, because who really looks all that closely? And maybe no one actually gives a second thought about anyone else, because they're all so worried about how their lives look from the outside.
Which sort of makes me feel better about the whole thing. I mean, long term, I have a plan for how my living room will look and it will include furniture that I picked out, rather than that fell into my lap. It will include things that match and coordinate. In the meantime, I guess I can just be glad that I won't be irritated if Baby M pukes or draws on it. And I can keep reminding myself that, probably, no one ever feels like they've "got it".