Domestic Duties

We talked about turning the downstairs around for a while.

I asked J when we returned from camp, "Do you think this is realistically going to happen, or not?" She said that she thought it would, and then it ended up happening that very night. What happened was this: We set up my library, the piano, and the desk in the front room of our house, which we ended up calling The Library, The Front Room, and The Living Room at various points. In the back room, we set up our two couches and the cube which housed toys for the boys downstairs. We called this The Family Room, The Living Room (you can see the confusion that arose from this arrangement already) and The Back Room.

There were some decent reasons for this arrangement. The back room is carpeted, the front room is not. The back room has big windows on three sides and is full of light, while the front room can be a little darker and more subdued.

But there were reasons to switch as well. J didn't like my bookshelves to be the initial sight upon entering the house, and with good reason--there isn't a matching pair among them, even the pair that is supposed to match, and many of my books are, well, more functional than beautiful. We also found that the back room was hard to keep clean, mostly because it felt too small. There was only a small carpeted area left when the two couches were in there, and James would immediately cover the whole surface of the room with toys upon getting up every morning. (On particularly difficult evenings when we didn't pick up after him he could just continue working on the previous days' mess without having to empty all his toy boxes for a fresh one.)

Attempting the room switch on Sunday night might have been foolish. We're both 30 now, after all, and at any moment we could pass by our moment of physical prime into the long, slow descent of old age. We had just arrived back from two weeks at camp the night before, the boys had both been horribly out of sorts all day, and the house was already in a state of near disaster. I brewed the rare pot of 8 PM coffee and began to pull books off shelves, stacking them perilously against the wall. We agreed to work to 11, and then we'd stop, no matter what was done or undone.

J took the opportunity to work on something else we'd talked about--reducing the toy content of the cube by about 20%. If James had 10 matchbox cars, we threw 2 of them in a box headed for the basement. If Owen had 5 stuffed friends, we retired one of them. We put away puzzles, threw out card games, and generally attempted to declutter our lives a bit. (It's amazing how much junk you pick up when you have kids.) That part went well, although there was trouble a few days later when James saw me emptying the vacuum filter into the trash bin and noticed that we'd chucked out Don't Spill the Beans. "Hey," he said "why'd you throw out Don't Spill the Beans? Are you going to throw it away." I noticed his hurt expression, remembered the wisdom of my earlier conversations with J, reflected for a few seconds about living more contentedly with fewer material possessions, and told him in a gentle and wise voice: "I guess you'll have to ask Mommy."

Once all the shelves were stripped bare and the toys had been resorted, we began to move pieces around. First we tried to move my desk (which is called "my" desk, but is really J's) into the corner. At this point we'd unloaded eight shelves of my library, excavated the furniture, moved the entire dining room into the kitchen (to clear a path for moving) and there was no going back.

"It looks awful," said J.
She was right. The desk fit horribly in the spot where we'd moved it, and the only other sensible spot would mean that we didn't have enough wall-space for the two largest bookshelves.
We tried angling the desk, and it looked even worse.

"Well, this is the nicest piece of furniture in the library. We have to make this look good, even if nothing else will."

We moved it against the back wall, and it looked better.
Then we hauled in the two tall bookshelves, and began experimenting. As the tape measure had previously confirmed, they didn't fit anywhere. I was almost to the point of suggesting that we move them to the basement when J had a stroke of genius: She tipped one of them on its side, and laid it underneath the big casement windows. We had to remove a little hardware to make it work, but the effect was striking, and the shelves look much better sideways than they ever did standing up. It opened up all sorts of additional wallspace, and gave nice long surfaces under the window for additional storage. Moving in the rest of shelves was no problem after that.

There was more trouble when we attempted to move the couches into the front room, though.
We tried the blue couch against the red wall and the brown couch against the white wall. It looked bad. So we tried the blue couch against the white wall and the brown couch against the red wall, and that looked even worse. We moved the blue couch out of the room and tried to find a place for just the brown couch. That looked bad too. I should say, by the way, that at some point an evil witch put an enchantment on both of the couches so that they grew heavier each time we picked them up. By the time we were finishing up (nearly eleven o'clock, the very witching hour of the night) we could hardly get them off the floor.

We ended up throwing out the brown couch. It sat on the curb for three days this week while we hoped for someone with a pick-up and a need for an ugly couch would come by, but I ended up breaking down yesterday morning and calling the trash company. (James still thinks "it's going to another family that needs a couch.") It served us well, that couch, for the last few years. But no matter where we moved it in the house, there was a basic problem with it--it was as ugly a piece of furniture as you'll ever see.

J didn't love the way the blue couch looked either, but she worked in the front room as the clock ticked towards eleven, and I took laundry-baskets full of books from one room to another.

We were done by 11:15, and all the furniture was moved from one room to another.

We even found Lightning McQueen, James' adored little red car which had been missing for a month. I snuck upstairs before I went to sleep and put it on his bed next to his pillow. The next morning James woke up to find Lightning next to him and excitedly showed George. I was about to get in the shower when I heard his voice calling from downstairs.

"Roy!!! Hey ROY!!!!"

I poked my head out of the bathroom door.

"James, are you trying to tell me something?"

"Hey, why'd you move all your books into the Family room? George says he doesn't like it. George says you need to move them all back, okay?"

Well, George may not like it, but we think it turned out pretty well.

Quick Hitters

We don't have cable, so whenever I check into a hotel room I put on SportsCenter. There are all sorts of amazing highlights and countdowns and special interest segments that I thoroughly enjoy for about 5 minutes as I kick off my shoes and practice trumpet for a bit. And then, after the 5 minutes are up, I remember why SportsCenter is stupid and we will never pay for cable.

SMITHS GO TO THE LIBRARY
Host 1: Okay, so the Smith Family was out at the Pittsford public library today, let's roll the highlights. Looks like Dad picked up a book on Leopold Stokowski, The Last Days of Pompeii, and in a surprising development you can see him here in the 300 call numbers picking up two books about purchasing a house for the first time. Reactions, guys?

Host 2: Yeah, I think that's a bad idea on his part. Supposedly he's already reading Froissart, and he just isn't going to have time to take care of all of those books before they're due again. I mean, the guy is trying to get up and read Homer and Ovid every morning...he's just overstretched. It isn't gonna happen. He's too old and tired, and he's not going to have time in his reading rotation--and that's not even counting how many times a day he has to read Curious George out loud.

Host 3: I disagree. You know, when I was younger and more important I read books quickly all the time. Of course the tempo of the game and the coaching were different back then, but I set records for how quickly I could read library books. I'd read seven every day. I say he finishes all of those books before they're due again.

Host 1: One other interesting note, it looks like James picked up a Curious George treasury and also Curious George in the Big City and Curious George Makes a Mess, and we can't confirm, but it looks like that DVD that he won't let go of is Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham.

Host 2: I've got a good source that says that DVD is in fact Green Eggs and Ham, and that he watched it as soon he got home.

Host 3: You know, back in my playing days I took a look through Curious George Makes a Mess, and I tell you, it's the exact same plot as the first part of Curious George Gets a Medal, down to the cow pulling the pump.

2 NEW PROPERTIES

Host 1: Now we have some highlights of two new properties that the Smiths are looking at. Looks like they're going into a yellow house north of the city up here, and then check out this blooper--they drive all the way up to Irondequoit--

Host 2:--yeah, that's not exactly a jog up the street--

Host 1: And they're LOCKED OUT of the property they're trying to visit. Look at them fumbling with the lock. So, sorry guys, you aren't getting in that house today. We'll be seeing that one on the blooper reels all night.

Host 3: Yeah, and the same thing happened to me a couple of times during one of my Pro Bowl years. I went to look at a property and just couldn't get access.

Host 2: I disagree that this was an accident. I say, that they saw how beat up that house looked on the outside and they only PRETENDED they couldn't get in.

J DRINKING COFFEE

Host 1: Well, we've got a follow up on some news that broke the other day. We can officially confirm that J is now a coffee drinker. She's been seen several times this week drinking plain home-brewed coffee in a black mug, albeit with some Bailey's creamer added. Here's a photo of her pouring a french press into a mug, and here she is looking really happy and awake. Guys, what do we think?

Host 2: Well, I can tell you that her husband must be really pleased. He probably regards it as an enormous personal victory that she's finally drinking regular coffee. I'd give him a warning, though. I'd say, "Son, you aren't gonna have enough coffee for yourself if you let your woman take a cup of it every time you brew some."

Host 3: I disagree. I think you're dead wrong on that one, and here's why--I used to make coffee all the time and share it with my wife before I went out and won lots of ball games, and there was always plenty to go around, and do you want to know why? Because if we ran out, I'd just make some more. BOOM, problem solved.

JURY DUTY

Host 1: In some surprising news, we've had it confirmed that R has received a notice of jury duty this week. Our legal team is still unraveling the fine print on this one, but it sounds like he's going to have to call in to a telephone number every night until he's either summoned to appear or he's dismissed from service.

Host 2: Yeah, and I think that there's no way he gets out of this week without having to at least appear at the courtroom. They're already within 200 jurors of his number, and it's only Tuesday--an unpleasant fact, but sorry, you're going to have to make an appearance.

Host 3: You know, I disagree. I think that when you get called for jury duty or you have some kind of substance arrest--you know, I had my fair share of them back in playing days--that all you have to do is just go out and play your game at an all-pro level week in and week out, and you just let the lawyers handle it. I don't think he has anything to worry about.

CHILD HEALTH PLUS

Host 1: And finally, we have some statistics. You can see here R made a phone call to Child Health Plus to enquire about enrollment procedures for the baby due in November, and we ended up with a final time on hold of 23 minutes and 40 odd seconds. A new record, gentlemen...how long do we think this one holds up?

Host 2: I don't think that record is going to hold. With the changes that have been made in the science of the game and the technology, I think that record is gonna be broken by next year.

Host 3: You know, I set the record for everything in every sport multiple times, and I tell ya, records are made to be broken. But you know, this one might stand. I might sound like I'm contradicting myself, but we've just got another couple seconds till we're at the commercial break.

Host 1: And we'll be right back with more gripping analysis after these shoe commercials...