Mrs. Who is glad to see me back, and I am too.

I've missed my blog but somehow I guess I just got overwhelmed last year. When the headhunter called in December 2010 to tell me that I had that job offer I couldn't even speak for a minute. It was almost as if I had been holding my breath for too long. I didn't realize how stressed I had been for so long and I had to stop talking about everything for a while.

But last year was a good year for us, R spending most of it unemployed notwithstanding. We didn't have a lot of wiggle room but we were paying our bills and not going into debt or anything. Was very nice to buy this house. I've felt for a long time like I was holding onto this town with claws on all four feet, and we finally feel that we really live here (knock wood).

One thing we did last year was to pull up the carpet in one of the two carpeted bedrooms. It was old, stained, and smelly, and we were glad to see it go. We put down Home Depot's surprisingly attractive and ridiculously easy vinyl flooring in there, and painted, but then we had to stop for a bit because $$$. Today we went through all of the drawers and things in the bedroom, identified a lot of stuff to throw away or give away and sorted the rest nicely into plastic boxes, and then moved the bedroom furniture into that empty room. It's a small room but it looks a lot bigger than I thought it would with that furniture in there.

When we were in Memphis, we had a house that was built in 1920, during the Victorian Revival. I like that style - hardwood floors, high ceilings with crown molding, glass doorknobs - and had some antique furniture to match. Concurrently with this, I developed - and F along with me as she got old enough - an interest in Queen Victoria and her many children and grandchildren as they spread out across Europe and married into the ruling families. We have lots of books about these people; F just gave me a book about Princess Beatrice, Q. Victoria's youngest, for Christmas. And I gave her a framed poster print of a very nice portrait of QV last year, but it's still here b/c there's not room in her apartment with all of her posters and things.

So that portrait went into that front room, and now the Eastlake-style furniture, and that room will be the guest room. And we're going to add some book space, probably wall-mounted bookshelves, for all of the history books that we have for the mid-19th to early 20th centuries.

And the master bedroom is about to get painted, and the carpet taken up there (and that will be the last of it,) and new flooring, and new bedroom furniture. Am kind of excited.

Here's the new guest room: