My little room that was.

I have too much stuff.  Hubs and I unloaded the living room of contents over the weekend to make way for new walls, new trusses, new flooring.  We have a 99% agreed upon kitchen design and an ever increasing pile of debris in the yard.  Dumpster prices are dumb and the length of time you can keep a dumpster is dumb, so we have put off getting a dumpster until the last possible moment…which means someone is going to have to throw that increasing pile from the ground to the dumpster.

 

It has rained a lot over the last week making it a little sloppy around the house, where the little grass we do have has been pulled out by equipment driving around on it, as well as some of the excavating, and now dying underneath piles of stuff.  Our block mason did take away most of the dirt he removed for the foundation and I realize he is likely going to use it somewhere else as fill, for someone else’s project.  Recycle, reuse…it’s all good.  But, if you ever wonder how artifacts long buried get from one spot to another, this is a possibility.  From my home to yours...dirt, and all it holds.

So, anyway, we now have most of my living room in the foyer.  All the blankets, pillows, and softer items have landed in the guest room.  We arranged a quiet haven in the basement, so we can get away and relax.  It’s going to be like this for a while I know, and I am so very looking forward to the changes that are coming.   I would like to have my son-in-law here to help hubs, but, there’s no place for him to sleep! While I have piled the guest bed upstairs with pillows and blankets and soft stuff, the TV is face down on the extra bed downstairs.

 

I think about my kids as babies crawling around on the floor in our now empty little living room.  We have used this room as both living room and dining room in our history.  My daughter practiced piano in that room for many years, piano lessons from her very accomplished grandfather next door.  Our first computer was there in what now seems a century ago, and this same daughter is now working in a software industry.  The boy she would first "chat" with, when that technology was brand new,  is now her husband.  My youngest daughter brought her now husband home from college and we shared dinner in that room, and sized him up, while he offered to help with dinner and meant it. My son and I stayed awake late into the night and watched David Letterman attach velcro to a jumpsuit and hurl himself onto the wall.  He developed his sleeping habits from me I'm afraid, and it started in that room.  

I look forward to the changes, and cherish those memories.  I came across a picture the other day while cleaning out saved papers from a box in the attic, of our house filled with family for my son’s 4^th birthday party.  I was hugely pregnant with my youngest child, and there were small kids running through the crowd, running through the little room,  my mom and dad both in the picture, my father-in-law…it was a snapshot both literally and figuratively.   Happy days, very happy days. There are more to come I know, as we extend our little living room, as we have our little family, making room for more.