mirror mirror on the wall

i found a mirror at ikea (one of my favorite stores, if you couldn't tell from...well, most of my home...) it's a circle with all these little squares around a large center. the patterns are interesting, as the little squares around the edge are not all glued on perfectly, and pick up light and color at different angles.

then another, at a church rummage sale. and a few more on clearance somewhere else, squares that i have to figure out how and where to place on some vertical area.

at any rate, the garage sale mirror started this afternoon's Attack of the Re-arranging Spasms.

the boys are at a computer thing today, so i've had the house to myself since i got home from work. always refreshing, as i never have the house to myself--don't take this wrong, i've lived my whole life save eight months with two to 8 people, and i like the comfort of having others in the house with me. i think it's the vestiges of growing up in a larger family; i'm most comfortable in the house both when i'm entirely alone, and when i'm surrounded by other people.

the dichotomy is not lost on me.

at any rate, in fall and spring i go through these predictable phases in which i want to clean and junk old crap and rearrange the house. this year i thought i was going to wait until the week after next, when i'm on vacation and plan to take care of a number of appointments, etc, that just never occur during the week.

had to go to work this morning, had to have dan stop in and move a HUGE computer monitor (props to dan for doing so--thanks babe!!!) and then stopped at ikea on the way home. (it's right next to work, honest...) the only reason i stopped there was because the other day we'd been talking about how cold it gets over by the patio doors during the winter, and how much i despise putting plastic up, since the windows are the only source of good light in the living room. dan suggested hanging a blanket, or curtains, instead of our horribly ugly vertical blinds.

so i stopped in with the intention of picking up a curtain rod and such, and then working on sewing the curtains at a later date. of course in the as is section i found curtains marked 60% off, so they came home with me.

now, the garage sale mirror has been sitting in the foyer for weeks. months, perhaps? i can't recall when it made its debut. i was going to wait to put up the curtains until dan got home, since that's a tall person thing and i'm short. so i thought, heck, i'll just hang up the mirror. found a spot, leveled things, got the mirror cleaned up and hung. i think it looks very nice, if i do say so myself.

however after hanging up the mirror, i felt empowered, which is always a dangerous thing, when you're alone in the house with power tools at hand, in my opinion.

i had options: i could clean something, or i could hang up the curtains.

however, to hang up the curtains, i needed to move the kitty tree. to move the kitty tree i had to move shelving units, lamps, plants, and the occasional concerned cat, until things looked more or less the way i wanted them to look. so far i am enjoying the new look--it freshens and somehow makes the living room look more finished, even if it is such a hodge-podge of the new, the slightly used and, in the case of the couch, the broken.

then of course i had to make trips to the garage, to ditch extra stuff, and clean up the kitty poo zone by the back door...so on and so forth. when i finally sat down on the couch to survey the look, i realized that i had two mirrors in the living room, and recalled the others upstairs, awaiting installation.

hello, my name is kim, and i have a mirror problem. i think. i suppose the first step is admitting...

***

mirrors reflect the reality. memory and opinion shift that reality, warp it into something that resembles a real fun-house mirror--stretch me tall, wide, crazy swishes for a face and hands the size of old oak trees.

i've never really liked mirrors, mainly because i don't like looking at myself in them. that being said, i've done a lot of reflecting lately, while working copious amounts of overtime. what can i say, sometimes data entry is like meditation.

(that and i have this theory that stress is like juicing oranges--under pressure, the orange changes and produces something different...follow? if not, oh well. it's my theory anyway. last week my exec T and my old manager S got canned on tuesday morning, out of the complete and utter blue. needless to say the office has been in uproar since.)

anyway, back to relflections.

when i look back in pictures i can see the way that i see the world, at different times in my life. sometimes i took pictures of my feet or hands, sometimes a blurry shot of my self, mostly shots of trees and the outdoor world. lately i haven't done much picture taking.

if you face two mirrors together you get infinity; perhaps this is my inner spirit, reminding me that my reflecting is not done, that it never will be.

***

when i was leaning over the big mirror that started my empowered interior design fit, scrubbing at the sticker on it, i saw my face, determined. that is not the face i always see, in the mirror. i have many faces, many looks, many emotions. i suppose that life does have beginnings and ends to it, just like a length of string, but for the duration, reflecting is a mobius strip, from which i cannot remove my self.

so thus, there is a reason for my multitude of mirrors. at least i think there is. (;