Inside Out

I'm redoing my master bedroom and bathroom. New furniture (the first time I'll have matching furniture in that room), new bedding, new paint colors. Everything.

Yesterday, I was coming home from Home Depot (because the guy at Lowe's was so rude, I told him that I was pretty sure Home Depot sold paint also and walked out). I had gotten my new paint color and was coming home to spend a crazy day of speed painting so I could finally finish up this phase so poor Jason could stop sleeping on the couch. (I used the low VOC paint and it didn't bother me, but poor fellow is in the middle of a week with no allergy meds in preparation for an allergists appointment on Friday.)

Anyway, stuck between my storm door and the door frame was another card for my card collection. I now have ten business cards left on my front door or handed to me directly by working men, who while driving by my poor house, felt so compelled to stop and offer me their painting services.

So, yes, the exterior of my house could use some sprucing up. I mean, it isn't horrible, falling apart, crack house looking. It could use some paint. The landscaping could be spruced up. The twin tracks of what used to be concrete, originally poured in 1960, could be revamped a little.

But yesterday it struck me, as I walked in with my gallon of interior paint, into the front room that I repainted and fixed up last year, through the kitchen that is half way through it's sprucing, into the back room that I just freshened up a few months ago (rearranged furniture, added a few lamps) and into the laundry room that a couple of years ago, I brightened up with a Mediterranean feeling bright blue and blinding white paint job.

The outside of my house gives you no clue as to how the inside looks.

And isn't that true with us as humans, also?

You hear that your house is a reflection of you by people wanting you to spend tons of money polishing up the outside of your house.

But the home is on the inside, not the outside. Inside is where I spend most of my time, the outside gets a look on my way in or out.

So, like my house, my outside is a little shaggy, a little dinged and wrinkled, a little neglected (ask poor Autumn who is in charge of my Brezhnev worthy eyebrows).

But my insides are the best they have been ever. I am constantly improving and learning about myself. I have been at a great place of comfort with myself, who I am and my place in this world for at least a decade now.

So I suppose my house is a reflection of me, but you've got to stop, come inside and spend a little time to understand what you are seeing. A drive by will tell you nothing.

The boyz say: I thought we were the best part of inside the house.