July 4, 2006

Well, this has been a practically perfect day.

I’m sitting on the forest green cushions of my window seat, looking out at the fireworks being set off by my neighbors down the street (they’re Hispanic; they’ve hung an American flag in front of their house). A car just beeped merrily at the fireworks as it passed. To my left, I can see my downstairs bathroom, which has been almost completely renovated today; we put down baseboards, put the sink back after tiling the floor yesterday, and moved the light switch from the middle of one wall (?!) to the other side of the room, next to the door. I can also see my kitchen, in which we hung four extra lights.

This isn’t merely cosmetic; most of the changes are either to replace thirty-year-old fixtures with new ones, or to improve a poor room (until today, my kitchen was lit by two naked bulbs).

Once we were done today—and boy, were we done—I followed my parents back to their place, where we chatted and had dinner. I made my way back here about an hour ago, and I realized this on the way back:

I’ve made it.

I own my own home and my own car. I’m respected and admired by my parents. I’m keeping in contact with my friends and family, whom I love. I have money left over after paying my bills. I’m in a secure job where I’m doing everything that needs to be done. I feel like I’ve dealt with most of my psychological issues.

Obviously, I’m not perfect, and my life’s not perfect. But in a lot of the important ways, I feel like I’m where I need to be.

Now to work on getting to where I should be, I suppose.

My, it’s been a busy couple of days.

My parents have been stopping by the house every day since Saturday, helping me renovate the downstairs of the townhouse. We ripped up the ugly, faded linoleum floor in the bathroom and laid down new tile, re-painted the kitchen (needed a second coat), and worked on a bunch of other miscellaneous things. Today, we should be able to get new lights set up in the kitchen.

It feels good to be doing this. To be improving my environment. Finally.

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