Please turn your T.V. volume down. We are, quite frankly, a bit fed up with the constant drone of the thing, for it does in fact carry up through your ceiling (which happens to be our floor) and into our living space. At the very least, please choose better channels.
Cheers, The Maricles
Apartment #9 has become a wonderful place to be over that last nearly six months. Every room at last feels like how that room should feel in a home. Let's tour it, shall we?
When you walk through our door, you walk through a very important place, you see, because I might have just said goodbye for the day to my husband, or welcomed him home there, or perhaps he welcomed me, or perhaps we’re both leaving together and will return sometime eventually, but certainly, together. Do not underestimate the significance of that door; it’s the threshold of the coming and going that, in some sense, we no longer do alone.
Mark and I have become something of movie junkies. Netflix has proven a worthy investment for our household and we had no intentions of canceling our membership after the 30-day trial. That being said, it is most enjoyable to watch movies when there is minimal background noise ... or downstairs noise ... but I won’t grumble. On weekends we like to clear the living room floor out and enjoy movies in a cozy nest of blankets and pillows. It feels a little like being married, and a little like being kids. There are just enough piles of organized clutter to be realistic, and two very important windows for the glorious mornings that pour through. There are roses on the bookshelf because my darling husband still courts me, and a smart collection of VHS tapes a few shelves down. The desk was mine. The coffee table was his. Everything is ours.
The kitchen and I nurture a complicated relationship: there are strong emotions involved, differing opinions about how things should be done, and an ongoing authority complex. It doesn’t like the way I cook and I don’t like the way it smells. But, my KitchenAid lives there, so I love it for that.
Dinner tables are terribly important. Although traditionalized as the unfortunate meeting place for busy families, a repeat of the previous night’s dinner, and that sense of obligation to “talk about one's day”, the dining table really is quite crucial in the completion of a home. Mark and I have found it to be a place of either quick breakfasts, or grateful prayers, or a host for sometimes languid, sometimes rapid, but also fruitful conversation. We must revamp the conventions of the American Family Dinner Table and sit joyfully down to meals with our spouses and families. There’s a book in that somewhere... but someone else can write it. And look, you already have a thesis.
I shall not attribute too many adjectives to the bathroom, but I will say that despite its very nature in being a bathroom, it is a grand place to ready oneself for the day. I have a new job, and because my new job requires me earlier than my previous one, I share this space of priming with my husband. Before, I more often than not gave into the temptation of laying lazily in bed while poor Mark had to comply with the alarm clock. Our new routine has since prolonged and enlivened our mornings together. And early mornings are not, in fact, such a dreadful thing. The little mirror serves both our faces well, side by side, and I’ve had the opportunity to closely observe the art of facial shaving.
The second bedroom we affectionately call “Storage A”, implying that perhaps somewhere in the apartment there is also a Storage B or C. There is not. There is just Storage A. And in Storage A we store things, and we close the door. When we need something from Storage A, we go in, we get it, and we come promptly out. We do not linger in Storage A because there is a drastic atmospheric shift when you cross the threshold. Storage A is about 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the apartment, and its air quality much more stagnant. It’s probably the perfect habitat for all kinds of exotic plants and animals, but I am not about to experiment. For those of you who have not yet received wedding thank-you’s from us, more than likely it is because they are lost somewhere within Storage A.
Lastly, there is our bedroom. I’ve never had “our” bedroom before because I was blessed with a little brother, not a sister, and never had to share. I can say with full joy, however, that sharing has never been so delightful.
Somewhere in here lies the difference between "homemaking" as housework, and "homemaking" as making a home in every room. And I do believe I'm quite taken with all the excitement the latter.
