I can blame PMS or I can simply take accountability for being a mega-bitch who is never satisfied with anything. The song Satisfied from Hamilton: The Musical could be written about me (without the Alexander Hamilton part). I researched and made decisions about things I never thought about (toilets, tiles, grout) and I measured everything which needed to be measured. The deliveries happened and for these large pieces, they all came with complications. We open the bathroom vanity, the marble counter, and the waterfall sink and all of them are beautiful. I get them into the bathroom where we painstakingly grouted our white subway tile with charcoal grout and the whole thing looks too damn huge.

I don’t mean to approach every situation searching for what’s wrong or how it could be made better? I can’t help it. I see the typos, mistakes, unleveled, cracked, extra grouted – all of it. Sometimes I actually dilute myself into thinking I’m easy to please and when I try to think about in regards to what am I “easy to please,” I come to the same answer – nothing.

I’m staring at my new lacquer gray vanity with a marble top and it comes with little feet, which makes it the appropriate height for an Amazonian, but not so great for 5’2” me. I am contemplating a collapsible step stool to store underneath the clever area created by these (unnecessary) feet. Here I was thinking it looked more like “furniture” (which I’m not sure became a trend in the first place).

The toilet we selected is a sleek one-piece porcelain sculpture and I envision cleaning its pristine outside will be a breeze with no obtrusive ridges, but somehow it’s modern shape, seems like a bubble letter “D” and has an extra large toilet seat and I feel a bit like I’m falling in and my butt might touch the water. It comes with two flush options, a smaller button for a pee or larger button for a poop. I tried the pee flush after a pee and it whisked away the urine but left the toilet paper. Poop flush was 100% successful so this has been the highlight of today.

I’m sure once the kitchen countertops get installed, the backsplash gets finished and the refrigerator water line gets connected (along with another list of 50+ things to do in the never-ending renovation), I will begin to play in my new room, scratching the cabinets with my cheek like a cat does to mark its territory.

I take a photo of the bathroom and send it to my sister and she says, “What is this, the Ritz? It’s gorgeous! You guys are like Chip and Joanna Gaines.” I think, “I photographed it well” and blocked out the dirty shower, which we haven’t cleaned or updated. Also not shown in the photo: how I need to be the Green Giant to brush my teeth at this vanity.

Usually, I think of my personality as similar to my dad’s (for better or worse), but today I recognized my mother in my reflection as I stared at the bathroom I painstakingly selected and turned my nose at it. I could hold it in. I could fake it’s all great and smile. I can say, “I love it,” and gush, but that’s not what I’m thinking so it’s not what I say. I complain and talk about all the things I DON’T like.

Earlier this week, my mother was telling me about the kitchen renovation she finally completed. “I hate it,” she said. When I pressed her for why I prepared to hear a laundry list of faux pas, she said, “There is a seam in the granite counter which disrupts the natural pattern.”

“What else?” I say. “The stove, the fridge, the sink, the cabinets?”

“Oh, I love those.”

I swing both ways in terms of thinking what I have is the best OR thinking the grass is always greener. My see-saw cliche reaction may often be dependent on which side of the bed I woke up on (usually the bad side) or perhaps the time of the month. Either way, I feel like a small girl in her new grown up room, strangely uncomfortable surrounded by this tall, shiny furniture, hoping it’ll grow on me.