In the apartment of floating stairs there was a thin sheen of very cheap paint that barely covered the antics of the previous tenants. I'd do the dishes and stare at a tiny little indentation in the wall in front of me and imagine what hung there and what it said. Was it a pithy saying? A bible verse? A motivational "you are awesome, go get em tiger!" type of thing? Or maybe feet that used to stand there were way more practical than mine. Maybe the hole was the birthplace of a hook for a towel or pot holder. Although it would have to be an unused pot holder because there is no way anyone ever cooked in that place. In the year we lived there, the apartment remained a steamy hundred and twenty degrees no matter what the outside climate was. I thought maybe it was just because we were locked in an eternal summer, but even when the rains came down and the floods came up and they issued a once in a lifetime frost advisory at the beach....it was still like the amazon rain forest in my apartment (a life saving capsule perhaps if the world ever plunges into another ice age?). I think I turned the oven on twice the whole time I lived there which is why I almost burned the place down those two times because the oven had morphed into a storage place for the random lego man, or pizza box. ( I swear we didn't eat pizza every day and instead utilized costco and my crockpot a lot too).
But the apartment, for all its faults had a fairly "clean slate" feel to it in comparison to THE HOUSE, as in THIS HOUSE. As in, I HAVE A HOUSE! We moved last week and if the apartment had a handful of quirks that caused me great wonderment, THIS HOUSE has a veritable cornucopia of intriguing blemishes that give my imagination no end of musings. Random patches on the ceiling and walls...brown and neon green tile in the bathroom...curtain rods that are all hung at different heights...kitchen cabinets that don't match... the creepiest poster of Pavarotti you've ever seen.... but those are all overshadowed by the epic and awesome fact that there
is no neighbor beneath me. (although I still cringe every time I drop so much as a sock on the floor). And we have a backyard! And....
... a washer and dryer! It's pure magic. I gather up all the shed fabric off my dirty children, stuff it in an enchanted box, turn it on and everything comes out like looking brand new and smelling like violet bliss! And all I have to do is walk a few steps. It's so much awesomeness in one spot we are beside ourselves with excitement (even if we are living like mole rats in a mountain of half unpacked boxes).
The boys are taking to their new digs like prairie dogs in a sand dune. For the first time they're all falling asleep the moment their heads hit the pillow (that'll happen when you have a big backyard to gallop around all day). They're also eating me out of house and home (more so than usual). Mornings and I are not on speaking terms, and it's just starting to dawn on me that I am the mother of four little boys. I got everyone fed this morning and finally sat down to my own breakfast and coffee only to have the oldest one come back in and say he was still hungry. So I gave him my breakfast while I made myself a new breakfast. Then son number two came in and decided he was still hungry too, so I gave him my second breakfast while I made a third....which...yeah, the third son ate my third attempt at breakfast and I gave up and decided I didn't really want breakfast anyway.
Lord have mercy on me when they're actually teenagers.
At least I won't have to worry about them beating up this house?
