The vinyl shades don’t seem so bad…

Since getting home from Guangzhou, China, some of my irritating/embarrassing household things don’t seem so bad.  The neighborhood seems so green and leafy, children mostly have open space to play on (sidewalks aren’t their playground) and people can walk on the grass.  As the shop girls on Shamian Island said, after looking at my photos of home,”it’s so clean and nice.” and my mother’s yard really does seem like a park.
As for the ripped vinyl shades in the kitchen, that are still there after 9 years of tenancy because when I have money to sew curtains I don’t know what to make, and when I have ideas, I’m broke; they don’t seem any shabbier than the curtains in the coffee shop in the old colonial buildings.  Shabby and splendid, side by side, like the new impressive building going up downtown, with bamboo scaffolding.