Let the Sun Shine In

Yesterday I happened to look up at the curtain and noticed it had gained layer of fuzz, cat fur, and ick. I think I may have screamed in horror or something. At any rate, soon after, my roommate and I decided it was a good idea to wash the curtains. He's almost 6' tall and I'm 5'5" or so, meaning he is the one who takes the curtains down.  He got the ones from the living room and the ones in my bedroom, then took down the curtains we had on a couple of doorways.

As I sat there looking at the living room, I realized that the house actually looked deeply pleasingly wonderful with all the fabric gone. It looked clean and streamlined and so open. I thought about how hard winter can be in the house, how light is lost and things just feel depressing. When my roommate came back into the living room, he could tell the same thing. The curtains needed a break for a while.

The problem is, the tops of our windows are ugly. There are the scars of the many different curtaining experiences and the tops of the blinds. We decided we needed valances or some other type of window topper. We assumed it would be easy to find these at a reasonable price.

Oh, how wrong we were!

We looked at several stores within our meager price range. Window toppers were either 1. ugly, 2. for children, 3. garish, 4. expensive, or 5. nonexistent. We drove home, my roommate declaring this is why people shop online for everything these days. I agreed, assuming, we'd find something within minutes. NOPE! Ugly, for children, garish, expensive, or nonexistent seemed to be our only options online as well.

During the evening, my roommate looked at the fabric we have in the house. It's free, not for children, clearly in existence, not ugly, and not garish . . . but, at the same time, also just not suited to window toppers. We thought about what to do and finally arrived at a very pragmatic conclusion. Window toppers will happen when they happen. For now, we'll be fine with naked windows. It's not like we have guests over all the time or anything, so we can wait for the right attractive, mature, beautifully dyed, inexpensive valances to come into our reality.

See, kids, sometimes love DOES wait.