The View from the Hermitage, Day 264

The Professor and I are sharing the house but separately. There is no way around sharing the air, though, so we wear masks inside at all times except when eating or drinking. If I'm going to wear a mask all day, it has to be one that does not fog up my glasses with every exhalation. The solution is a bit intimidating, but it works great.

Pay no attention to the wet, stringy hair. I'd just washed it. Not really realizing that it would still hang down and get in my eyes, I had not put on a headband. I did that after taking this photo. Fortunately, there's no one around to see that state of my hair whenever I take the mask off to ingest sustenance. I will not wear the mask while sleeping. The master bedroom is on the second floor and is where I'm sleeping. The Professor is sleeping in the guest room which is in the basement. I think there's enough air between us especially given that the door to the basement will be closed. 

The Professor's test kit will arrive tomorrow. He'll do the test on Monday. If it's negative, he'll need to continue the quarantining. If the test is positive, I pack as quickly as I can and move to Son #1's house or Son #2's cabin. The house here in town would be preferable, but I would just need not to be in the house with The Professor. 

It's tiring, mentally, to manage staying apart, coordinating schedules so that I'm outside when he moseys from his upstairs office to the downstairs guest room, or be in the master bedroom while he picks up his dinner from the kitchen. I'm sure that a portion of the fatigue is rooted in worry over the what if hanging over our heads.

All the numbers--local, state, national, not sure about world--seem are headed in the wrong direction. What concerns me most right now is the the seven-day rolling average of the percent of those tested who test positive is 9.5 percent. Way back when (or so it seems) when reopening the lockdown was first proposed, nothing could happen until that percent positivity was under 10 percent for two weeks. What does it say that it's on its way back up to 10 percent? And we need to stay tuned, because the post-Thanksgiving surges could easily start this weekend. Will those keep people from traveling at Christmas? Not bloody likely.

Away with numbers and serious stuff! The two Christmas decor photos I could not put up yesterday made it to the laptop today. Here's my two Christmas touches so far.

Also of note is that I finished re-making the wreath I did several years ago of doll heads and body parts. I also made a new wreath with doll heads as holly berries. The local quilt guild has a "show and tell" page on which members can post things they are working on or have finished. I put up the two photos below, and only one person has clicked for any response. I think they've always wondered about me, and this may have them wondering even more. Here are the wreaths in question.

I'd have liked to have formatted them a bit better, but that was vexing me, and I'm tired. So here they are, up close (to each other) and personal, not centered nicely as the decor photos above are. 

It's funny to be missing someone who is just upstairs.

 

Inferior Interior?

I know people for whom their house is their canvas. The picture they show with their decorating stuns. A couple of those friends have listened to my lamenting about not being talented in terms of interior decorating and said that can't be the case. They've seen my quilts and other works and say I am creative and talented. My response is always that a room or even a wall in a room is too large a scale for me to handle. I'm more comfortable on a much smaller scale.

We're having the interior of our house repainted save for the room holding younger son's worldly goods from his younger days. The painter has suggested an accent wall, and I have surprised myself be being intrigued. An online search took me to a site at which I can play with colors. I have acutally used this site. I have looked at various shades and pondered what they might look like on our house's walls. I find myself thinking of colors followed by thinking about needing new drapes followed by thinking about needing a new rug. Bluish green or greenish blue are the colors to which I most gravitate when I think of our walls.

It does not help (me, anyway) that our main floor is a very open floor plan. I've seen several articles online that note an accent wall can be a very good thing in an open floor plan. However, the open floor plan makes me worry more about just how everything will fit together. Here's what I'm looking at.

The wall in question is in our dining area. Here's a photo. The current curtains are blue and the rug under the table is greens and blues.

I apologize for the bad lighting; I could not get the it right with the pocket point-and-shoot camera I was using. The wall in question is the one around the window--the part around the window plus the two walls on each side. I would like to get rid of the bookcases on the sides and a low bookcase that sits underneath the window. To show how this fits in, here's the kitchen, which is to the left looking at the first shot.

Yes, I know there is more than a possibly acceptable amount of clutter. I am actually looking forward to having  all our hardwood floors sanded and stained because that will mean totally emptying the house. My plan is to use that as a mechanism for uncluttering as much as possible.

But back to the accent wall. Here's the view in the other direction, into the living room.

And, finally,  here is the view looking into the foyer, directly across from what would be the accent wall. I look at this view and wonder if the white knee walls should also be painted the accent color. Would that help define the dining area? Why am I asking that question? Me decorate? The mere fact that I am considering such things is worrisome.

The painter has also suggested doing the open walls above the foyer in the accent color. I couldn't get all three surfaces in the same photo, and the lighting sucked, but here's a photo taken from the stairs. You can also see a bit of this area in the above photo of the foyer.

I'm blogging about this because I am open to comments and suggestions. I promise not to hold anything against you if you suggest something that I do and then don't like. I keep reminding myself that "it's just paint," but the fact that I am even considering this is somewhat worrisome. Does this mean I'm adulting?