People ask me lately how I'm doing and I couldn't even define that entirely. My asthma is kicking my ass because the rabbit brush is in full bloom and my body has about run out of defenses. I've got a lot of housework to do and I've been revamping my room.

Today, I took out all the clothes from my side of the closet that don't fit. I have a portion of Mike's closet devoted to my clothes that I haven't even begun to consider -- mostly because it's buried behind shit and is a bitch to get to.

I can actually see floor in my closet. There are still a few hangers, but all the clothes have been sorted through and that which will fit in two sizes from now lives in two boxes that I can safely stow either in the garage or the bottom of my closet until I either fit in them or it seems pretty apparent that's not going to happen soon and I give them to charity.

I'm going to paint a dresser that we've got in the garage and stamp leaves and stuff on it. I treated it with paint thinner today and tomorrow I'll scrape/sand off what I can and then I'll paint it. I think that will become a storage vessel for my seasonal clothing. I'll swap t-shirts for my long-sleeved stuff and move my xmas and winter stuff over. I have several dressers in the garage that I could also broach for the same thing, but this dresser we have is a high boy like the other dressers, so seems more in keeping with what I've already got in the room. The other two are garage sale specials which hardly seem worthy of painting. One is a particle board with plastic veneer and the other one is a vintage metal dresser in two shades of icky mint green. The latter works great, but metal is not something that would look good in this room no matter what color I did -- wrong texture and feel.

Our bedroom is kind of a natural world in earthy colors. We have two red walls and two goldenrod walls (they aren't every other wall, but rather two and two)and I've got lamps and rugs with leaves in the same colors. When I said I was painting it red, people gave me shit about it and said that'd it'd be ugly. It's not, though. It looks really good and I enjoy how dark it makes our room -- like a comfortable cave. All the furniture is wooden. We've even stained boards to pick up the colors in the lamps/rugs. There are pictures of moose (my husband's nickname) and watercolors of flowers, as well as posters of wildflowers. One of the dressers has decorative knobs that are kind of a weathered brass leaf.

The only thing we really have to have NOW is more lighting. My dream would be to have someone come in and make my closet beautiful and organized, but that's a bit out of the budget for now.

Our adjoining bathroom has brown tile, and green and blue sponge paint with silver butterflies and dragonflies, with a sky blue ceiling, and drawer/cupboard pulls that are pewter-looking branches. All of the faucets, the picture frame, the bathroom shelf behind the toilet are all in some version of silvery finish. We'd like to go more brushed nickel all over the place, but we'll get there when we can. To me the bathroom embodies the earth, sea, and sky -- sounds very feng shui, I'm sure, but it's just how I feel about it. Mike wants curtains, and I even bought fabric, but I can't bring myself to cover the night sky -- something I often watch in the *wee* hours. I have a leafy shower curtain with matching sink set in blues and greens, a silvery maple leaf candle holder, and a watercolor of butterflies and blackberries.

Some day, when it's clean I'll take pictures and show you.