First, a history lesson:
After World War II, there was a whole lot of prosperity and a whole lot of soldiers looking for good jobs and houses to live in. Builders helped fill both needs by inventing suburbs, those charming little towns where every house looked alike, were packed close together, and were put up as fast and as cheap as they could possibly be built.
And so, the mouse house.
I couldn't tell you the square footage -- how do they figure that out, anyway? It's smack in the middle of a tract put up in 1949, one of about 25 house on this street that were identical when they were built (with minor variations), although now they've all been added to, fixed up, and so on. The two blocks behind me are filled with the same houses, and there's an elementary school just down at the end of my street. Welcome to Bergen County, New Jersey, folks, just ten miles from Manhattan via train or direct busline, where half the houses are in tracts built between 1947 and 1960. At least there are trees now, really tall and old ones, so it's really not as bad as I'm painting it. And some of the tracts are filled with really lovely homes. Not, however, this one.
My house is a Cape Cod, with a finished, but not expanded, attic. There is a detached one-car garage. An unfinished basement. The main floor has a living room, an eat-in kitchen, a normal bedroom (maybe about 10 x 10?), and a second bedroom roughly the size of a walk-in closet. The upstairs is one big room, no doors. There is a nice big family room that someone added on to the back of the house in the late seventies. One bathroom. No dining room. In the kitchen, I can stand in one spot and turn around and touch the sink, the stove, the refrigerator, the microwave. There is about 1 foot width of counter space next to the sink.
Okay, you got the picture. It's a small house. And now I have more furniture in it that can possibly fit since I took some of the stuff from my father's apartment, and we've got on hold two really nice extra-wide club chairs that my in-laws are giving us, just waiting for a place to fit somewhere.
I begin today.
I keep imagining those sliding-square puzzles my parents used to give us to do in the car on long trips (at least that's where I remember them from.) They kept us occupied for so long because they were virtually impossible for us to finish. You know, you have to move this square to be able to move that square, forever, until you get the whole finished picture in front of you. The house feels like that to me. And today, I've got to move the first square.
I have to get rid of the old computer in K's room, move the computer desk to the basement, and drag the rocking chair to the middle of the room so that there's room for my mother's loveseat/sofabed, now sitting in the middle of the floor in the only clean space. Find a new place for the rocking chair. Find K's laundry all over the room and do that.
I have to unpack all the boxes of my parents' stuff that's all over the living room, find places to put that, and re-arrange the furniture in there. The killer here is the piano. I don't really play the piano, no one here does, but my grandmother bought it for us when I was 7 in the hopes that someone would learn. (Sorry, grandma.) When my parents moved into an apartment ten years ago, I took the piano. I have no need (or aptitude) for it except sentimental, so I can't get rid of it. It's like the upright elephant in the living room that everything else revolves around. So the piano stays. The couch, the chairs, everything else, moves.
I can't think beyond that, except R suggested that when she goes to Wales in September, we make her bedroom (the walk-in closet) a study for Hubs. Cool, cool, very cool. Then I can start shifting the puzzle pieces in the family room and actually have a place to sit my bottom down other than at my desk.
It's gonna be a long day.
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I did most of my Friday Five and then I accidentally erased it, so to the best of my memory:
1. What was your most memorable moment from the last week?
When R called and said she'd gotten into graduate school in Wales for next year.
2. What one person touched your life this week?
This is the hard question I couldn't answer. Maybe there are too many. Many there wasn't anyone this week. I just don't know.
3. How have you helped someone this week?
One of my dearest and oldest friends, who lives alone in the city, had to put her cat to sleep last Saturday. She called me early in the morning and I talked her through it until she was able to make the decision.
4. What one thing do you need to get done by this time next week?
Everything. Read above.
5. What one thing will you do over the next seven days to make your world a better place?
The GSA is holding its first school event next Friday, a kind of coffee house where kids get up and read poetry, do stand-up, play the guitar and sing, etc. It's a low-key thing (not like running the junior prom, which I did for 15 years) but it's big for us since we're a new club and we haven't done anything like this before. With any luck, we will also demonstrate that the club's members are just regular people like everyone else and not weird because they're gay (maybe) or just sympathetic to the cause. It's not the coffee house that makes the world a better place, it's the club. The coffee house is just what the club is doing this week.
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I'm watching a Henry Fonda movie
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Sweet Sorrow - 06.12.2007
So ... - 12.19.2006
Christmastime Is Near - 12.18.2006
Fifteen Years - 12.17.2006
A Message From Our Sponsor - 12.16.2006
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