This is almost the end of two weeks of unemployment. Yesterday, I physcially went to the unemployment office, dragging myself along on my cane, because I had also heard that there is a program in the county to help people get jobs if they have disabilities / health problems, and I thought it was in the same building. I found the place, but they closed early that day, due to a meeting or something. Sigh.

Anyway, to try to cheer myself up, I decided that it wouldn't hurt for me to try to spruce the place up a little, spring cleaning, as best as I can dragging my left leg along behind me like so much dead wood. We still have boxes of stuff yet to be unpacked from the move, empty walls, weird placement of furniture, etc.

In our house in Gardner, we had a foyer. I started to indulge a little creativity there, making little "vignettes" that were relevant to the holiday or season. I was really proud of an Asain themed floral arangement I did, but Winston was a puppy and, in one of his famous, controlled crashes down the stairs, he skid over the foyer tiles and hit the occassional table like a bowling ball. Glass, wicker, tastefully earth toned pebbles EVERYWHERE. What a mess. After that, we put the bookshelf there.

The Hub, it turned out really enjoyed seeing these "arrangements" - enjoyment WAY out of proportion to the effort or meaning I was investing in these things. I've always considered having a lot of stuff just to be decor items a waste of money. If somebody gives me a ceramic snow-man or a sugar dish shaped like a pumpkin, I'll treasure it because it's a gift and put it out at the appropriate time. But you won't see me stocking up on plastic, brightly colored eggs, a 10 foot tall blow up bunny for the front yard, pastel balsa wood chicken wreathes for the door, etc, even though Easter is my favorite holiday

But after I realized The Hub was really into the seasonal foyer ( Honey! Finally, you're taking an interest in our house! I'm so glad! --?!?!--hello? What did you think it was when I killed a Saturday morning scrubbing the kitchen floor and Windexing all those goobers off of the glass door?) I began to put more of an effort into it, and establish a small budget for it.

This Easter, I was ready to write it out of the budget completely. We don't have a foyer anymore. Maybe he wouldn't notice if I didn't "decorate." No go. "Hey, honey, look - don't you like these ceramic rabbits? You want one for the living room?"

"I am not paying $14 for a ceramic rabbitt!"

"You aren't going to decorate?"

Oh boy. So, I went over to Big Lots and found the same ceramic rabbitt we'd seen at Target ( minus a pink ribbon) for $4 and a very badly beaten scrawney silk flower ....arrangement is just not the word for what I got for $7. They were some scrawney lookin' silk roses glued harem-scarem into a pot with all their little plastic tags still hanging on. I remembered I had some fake ivy left over from Christmas and had found a pair of those wire cutters you can use for those kind of stems. I bought the rabbitt and the yellow rose mess, dug around in my little "decor gifts" cabinet for stuff I already had, wrested the roses into an actual design supported by the left over ivy and - viola- we have spring decor!

This is what it looks like:

Eat your heart out, Christopher Lowell.