Piano Man in the Dining room

Because I don't own a camera (really), I am always purely thrilled when someone sends me pictures- total novelty. Since this is a blog about my domestic life and not about my friends, I will just tell you about what you are seeing and not anybody's back story (but how cute is baby J here?). The piano is an old and awful thing that I fought with B over letting in the house (his argument, "it was my mother's and now E can learn to play the piano and it will make her even better at math"; my argument, " it is so ugly and big and it makes me cry when I look at it". I think my points were stronger but, somehow, I lost). There is nowhere great to put it, and I'm still a little bitter, but moving on. The girl is-slowly-learning how to play, and it's nice when friends play on it. It's not nice when children "play" on it, however; I keep meaning to close it when we have people over but always forget. I also always mean to tell E not to mention the 3 drum-sets in the basement so's no one gets any ideas, but I always forget to do that, too.

Anyway. On top pf the piano is a smattering of books, as it is a flat surface and that is where books go. I used to be extremely precise about my arrangement of books- fiction alphabetically arranged, non-fiction arranged by subject, then alphabetized. The (adult) fiction pretty much lives in the bedroom, and is still alphabetized, but then I ran out of bookshelves so the books have rather taken over. Which I love, actually. Someday there will be shelves that are built into the wall, but this is fine for now. Also on top of the piano are what will probably be the second-to-last round of paper whites for the year, maybe the only things that make winter worth living through (well, that and soup, of course). The walls are orange, which I'm not sick of quite yet, and you can just see in the mirror one of the black walls in the living room, with the lyrics to "At Last" written in chalk, inspired by the inaugural dance, of course, but also from missing B, who was in DC at the time for the party (where he was working, not attending, despite looking handsome in a tux).

As I said, I won't talk about my friends here, but I did want to give the photographer, Ryan, a shout-out. He recently did a small installation in the living room that is really different from what I would normally be drawn to, but I am loving it and feel quite honored that Ryan is letting it live here for now. I'll put pictures up soon (like when he takes some and sends them to me!).