My husband has just bought a house – our first – using an inheritance
from his parents. It’s in the bush, but near enough for me to go to
town and work three days a week in order to keep the roof over his head.
But there are problems buying your first home when you're ageing
baby-boomers like us. I'm doing really weird things for the first
time - like buying curtains. Who knew buying curtains could be so
complicated.
I spent an hour and half in earnest conversation with Brenda at David
Jones, during which she deftly relieved me of a breath-taking amount of
money, and promised faithfully that the fitter would be there to
measure up, oh, some time soon. (When you live in the bush you
have to wait until the installer/fitter/tradesman etc etc etc is on his
circuit - and of course, he's always just passed through the day
before).
And although I've run businesses, hired and fired people, and blithely
dispensed millions of dollars on behalf of companies and governments,
I've discovered there's nothing like buying curtains to tap into my
deepest insecurities.
What if I've got it wrong? What if my gay friends arrive and
collapse shrieking at my appalling taste? Should I have poles, or
flick sticks (don't ask) or ties or tassels? Evidently there are
many different types of lining, all of which look completely
interchangeable to me - what if I get it wrong, and the curtains
fade? The stress is killing me.
Brenda isn't helping my confidence much. I'm clearly her oldest
first-timer, and she's speaking very slowly and carefully, and I very
much doubt that she's going to respect me in the morning.
She suggests I take something called a swatch home with me to see if it
suits. It turns out a swatch is a big hunk of material in the
pattern you think you want, and you're meant to hold it up against the
wall, and pretend it's a curtain.
So I take it home, and hold it up against the wall, where it looks
nothing like a curtain, and immediately dissolve into a gibbering heap.
I'm having a total imagination failure - the swatch is so small, and
the window is so big, and I can't for the life of me imagine how it's
going to look - like living in a sort of floral tent, apparently.
Mr. S. (the husband) says really useful things like let's not have
curtains anyway. This after initially refusing to move - because
the new house didn't have curtains.
I toy with the idea of recycling him, but think better of it because it's his house.
I try Brenda's tactic of speaking slowly and carefully, and it works, because he goes away.
I decide I'm going to treat this like any other corporate
decision. I'm going to evaluate the pros and cons, and then I'm
going to make a decision - and because I'm a corporate warrior, I know
not to be afraid of failure. What's the worse that can happen,
right?
Breeennnnddddaaaaaa!
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Change of Life 
