On the Importance of Curtains

I have been having this weird feeling lately - something entirely new to me, and it kinda freaks me out. Ok, it REALLY freaks me out.

I have this feeling that I want to put down roots. Like, live in one place for a while. 

See, to really appreciate this, you have to know that since I left the house at 18, I have moved about every nine months or so, until right before I got married at 28. Even though everyone knows moving is expensive, and a total bitch, I can't help it. Around the six month mark, I start to get itchy. And by 7-8 months, I can't wait to get out of there. Usually, if I'm in a 12 month lease, this means that the next four months go by painstakingly slow, while I scour the internet looking for the next apartment, the next neighborhood, the next kitchen, and the next walk-in closet.

I love change. I love the feeling of finding that perfect apartment, and imagining where your cups are going to go, and getting new bedding to break in the space.

But here's the downside. The places where Ive lived have a certain post-college quality to them. I mean, I get everything in it's place, and everything is unpacked, but my place usually looks a litte more like this:

Instead of looking like this:

Now, I'm not saying that I expect my house to look like something from Pinterest, but there are just a series of things that basically NEVER happen in an place that I live. They include things like: curtains, art on the walls, paint, coordinated furniture, or floor rugs.

Part of it is that I have a really hard time with interior design, and I find it completely overwhelming and then I give up. But the other part usually involves this little voice in the back of my head that says "Your lease is up in 6 months, and we're probably gonna get outta here anyway. Do you REALLY want to take the time to hang the curtains, just to have to take them all down in six months?" Or something like this, "I know you really love that couch, but it's $2,000 and if we move in four months, it could get scratched up. Plus you never know what your next living room is going to look like - what if it doesn't fit?"

So I don't. And I don't paint. And I don't hang things on my walls. And I don't own a ton of matching furniture. Currently my coffee table is an old table from 1992 that one of my past roommates inherited from her mom, with a coat of black paint slapped on it. In fact, in some places you can see where I didn't get the coats on thick enough, and some of the primer is showing. 

After ten years of this kind of living and thinking, you can imagine my surprise when I said to my husband "I think I want to buy a house."

It shocked us both. 

Actually, I'm lying. It didn't happen that way. It happened more like this:

Steve and Jenni, walking in our neighborhood, and stumble upon an open house sign.

JENNI: Open house!? Let's go check it out!

STEVE: Ok, we can go, but we're just looking. Remember, we. are. just. looking.

JENNI: Yea yea yea I know. 

As we walk toward the house, we see this:

It turns out to be a five bedroom house from 1887, that has been used as a bed and breakfast for the last fifteen years. It has a chef's kitchen that opens into a grand dinning room, an in-law's house tucked quaintly below the first floor, a built in wet bar, and a grand stair case that looked something like this:

I died. I mean I literally died.

And my husband, who can read me like a book, thanked the real-estate agent for showing us around, took his fingers and hooked it into the collar of my jacket, and headed for the door. 

Later, while looking through produce at the grocery store, I randomly burst into tears and demanded to know why he didn't love the house, and didn't want to buy it.

STEVE: Well, for starters Jenni, its TWO MILLION DOLLARS.

(A small detail I just so happened to overlook).

But then being the amazing husband that he is, he hugged me and told me that he's not ready to put down roots yet, that we still have a lot of amazing-young-married living to do, countries to explore, and adventures to have. And when we've lived in Spain, and partied off the coast of France, and hiked through parts of China, then we can start looking for a place to settle our roots. "Right now Jenni, there's just too many exciting things out there that we have to discover. We can't settle yet."

So this is the part where I freak out. 

In our relationship, I am not the stable one. I am the kite, flitting around the skies, changing my mind, forgetting my keys, and becoming completely distracted every time I see something shiny. Steve is the one who sets the alarm, sends out calendar invites, and remember to send in our rent check. 

I am not supposed to be the one who wants stability first. 

I have never imagined that I could forgo the exhilaration of moving to a country that I've never been to for the comfort of curtains. This leads to the only possible conclusion:

I AM GETTING OLD. 

Wrinkles, cellulite, and boring board games here we come. Next thing you know Im going to want to be in bed by 9pm, and complaining that my neighbors party too loud. 

But even in spite of all of that, I can't shake the feeling. I want curtains. I want wall paint. I want to know that there isn't a chance we are going to be leaving in 2 years. Renting, owning, whatever. I just want to know that if I take the time to paint this pattern onto my living room wall, that we're not going to move 5 months later:

Part of this feeling might come from some of the culture of San Francisco in general. I feel like most people that I meet aren't natives, but moved here at some point in their lives. And when we're honest with each other, we LOVE LOVE LOVE the city, but have secret plans to leave the city once we are ready to settle. We'll go Sausalito, Marin, or Berkeley where the housing is little less expensive, there are a little more trees, and you can BREATHE at night after you leave the office. To me San Francisco has this subtle feeling that everything is filled with temporary. It's a tent city built on glamorous food and beautiful dreams. 

So especially in the tent city, I have come the conclusion that curtains are important. They say to yourself and the world "Hey, we're here for a while. We've made some holes in the walls, and screwed things into place. Our whole life isn't just 3M strips and Ikea rugs. And we're not planning to bolt to Marin as soon as we can afford a house. We're going to stay a while. We'll be here if your life goes sideways, if you find an amazing new lover and need someone to celebrate, if you're ever alone on Christmas Eve, if you need someone to coo and your band new baby and tell you how perfect she is, if you lose a job...we're here. And you can tell from our curtains, that we're planning on keeping it that way."

Just last week, I just ordered these:

Happy Friday.

-J