i'm back

And there's SO much to catch up on!
Ok, so I have been productive since I got back from my much-needed vacation. I'm still behind the cure schedule...we're supposed to be on week 7 now, but I'm really still on week...um...5, i think. I'm still painting!
But I'm operating in a mixture of weeks, really.
I'm not going to be done by the end of next week (week8) by any means...but I will have made some progress and hopefully that will stand for something.
I don't know if I'm really feeling worthy of a "cure certificate" to be honest..I mean, I'm going to finish, but its going to be more like a 12 week cure (as someone else already suggested) or for me, maybe a 14 week cure.

Its tough because one of the things keeping me from being totally done (besides an abundant cash flow) is my "no more filler furniture" commitment.
I've realized through this (it's not called therapy for nothing, right?) that I have a real tendency to buy fill-in or "carbohydrate" furniture, as Maxwell calls it, because I want things to be finished or settled or just complete...even if it means I don't love the things I have.
And that leads to me not feeling very connected to my home and that's part of the reason I really don't like my living space as much as I want to.

One of the things I realized from the flood in our place is that if I lost almost everything I own, furniture wise, it would all (almost all) be immediately replaceable.
And I'm not trying to promote an unhealthy connection to physical possessions here, but I want to at least miss my things if I lost them...and the truth is, I wouldn't, because I'd be able to go out and find near exact replacements for all of it.
It would be an inconvenience, and it would be expensive, but it wouldn't be hard to replicate all of it....and, well, that's not what I want.

The homes I always envy the most are the places that look like a collection of well placed, individually found items, collected over a lifetime. I always want that, but think I can never have it. Why, I'm not exactly sure. But I do know that when I see things like that, a perfectly randomly found gem of a peice...a desk or chair that I just LOVE that's not from a big-box store, I always think "I can't afford that".
But you know, I probably could if I hadn't already dropped the $200-$300 on a fill-in piece from West Elm or CB2.
I'm not knocking those stores...they haven't their rightful purpose and I'm sure I'll still own things from them, but I don't want ALL of my stuff to be from them.
It doesn't suit me and it makes me feel like i'm living in a catalog rather than a home.

SO, this whole long drawn out story explains that one, I've learned something about myself that I want to change, and two, that my room may not be "done" in any specific schedule, but I'm ok with that because I want it to be filled with things I've waited for-- that I absolutely love and hope to never lose. And if i have to live without a shelf or nightstands for the next several months, a year even, I can do that. It'll be worth it because I know when I find exactly what I want and I haven't already wasted a few hundred dollars on a stand-in piece, it's going to be so fun to purchase and come home with the perfect thing I've been searching for.