But Santa, I Want It...

There's a stack of furniture piled up in the Grandchildren's nursery area of our house. In a past life, I was a decorative painter and somehow people are still finding me. I managed to recently paint, distress and send a big table and a truckload of chairs back to their home, allowing us to move through the room a little better. But there's the next project staring me in the face every time I'm coming or going. It's a crazily-painted set of bedroom furniture, all wacky with red checkerboard print and faux-marbled tops. I didn't sign up for this. Now I've got to sand all that mess off there and then restore it to calm with hand-mixed chalk paint and polyurethane. A wise soul told me I needed to get stuff in writing from people,  to outline what it is I'm "signing up" for. You'd think I would have learned that, since I've been doing these kinds of enterprises since, well, forever. Alas, as my husband likes to quote, "It is what it is." I hate it when he says that.

Just once, I'd like to get all the layers off for a minute or two. Layers of promised jobs, projects, paint requests, postponed contacts, and appointments that never got a firm commitment date. All these hang around like ethereal weights with no real deadline, slowing pressing down on me during my dreams until I can't breathe. But I do it to myself, I know. I say "yes" or "yes, later" when I should just say no. Just an example -- tonight, as I was breezing through Facebook Marketplace (don't do it, it's addictive), hating on some of the overpriced, used, yard sale items, but then finding stuff that I must have...I stumbled upon a friend's post about a gorgeous, 9-foot high fake Ficus tree that needs to be in my living room yesterday. I mean, really, how many trees would work in this house, with my 12-foot ceilings and massive windows? And there's a corner that is just begging for it. I used to have real Ficus trees that were also amazing but shed leaves everywhere. This one looks real and won't slough all over my floor. As I began to manipulate my tomorrow around in my mind, so that I could drive an hour to go look at this thing, I also remembered that it might not fit into my SUV. And even though my one "appointment" got cancelled for tomorrow, I have a huge list of things to do. Still trying to justify my taking up most of Monday to go buy something (when I just promised myself I'd stop buying things), I remembered the furniture piled up in my house. Tomorrow's the only day there's no rain forecast this week, and sanding that blasted stuff has to be done outside. Round and round we go. Where it stops, nobody knows.

So the buck stops here. Literally. The bucks are not going out the door. I'm going to do my list tomorrow so that I can make some bucks. I'm messaging her now, since she's probably asleep and can't answer back. Everybody (except her) is a winner and my conscience can rest easy. So if I get the furniture done and get paid, and nobody else buys it, can I still get the Ficus? Jesus take the wheel...