The room was a big square, walled with old-fashioned yellowed wallpaper that was peeling in spots. The tears in the wallpaper revealed even more old-fashioned Pepto-Bismol pink paint that was chipping and peeling even more. The only two windows were on the west wall which looked out on the more scenic side of the house at the tree-filled park across the street. Unfortunately, there was also a streetlight there also, which poured its light in to the house each night, necessitating window-blackening shades which blocked the only pretty thing about the room.
The floors were bare, unless you counted the gobs of dog hair that lined the baseboards. Last summer, she’d torn out the old maroon-colored wool carpeting. At one time it might have been fashionable, but 50 years of dust and UV rays had rendered it to dry-rotted shreds and threads. The floors underneath were pine wood, hardly durable enough to withstand her own minimal wear and tear, let alone that of two dogs dragging their paws over it. It was now quite scratched up. As luck would have it, at the side of the bed on which she raised each morning (and more than a few afternoons, when the naps of depression took over) there was a popped nail that she repeatedly stepped on and swore at. The nail had popped at such an angle that it was impossible to fully pound back in to the boards. She supposed she could buy a throw rug and place that over the nail, thus protecting the soles of her feet, but that would involve choosing a color and pattern and committing to some decorating style and she didn’t have that kind of energy in her.
The room seemed to mirror her own self – lonely, messy, beat-up, undecorated, worn …old. It had potential, but that potential needed someone with greater talent than she had to bring it about.
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