House Work

 

As I sit here listening to Mendelssohn and Beethoven, at the same time trying to ignore the sounds of work being done downstairs in the kitchen, I reflect on the things that are important in life.  Boy, is that last statement a bit pretentious!  But there is some truth in it.  Such goings on, as are happening in our kitchen during a major renovation (by someone else, I wouldn’t dare try myself), do allow time for some thought.  They make you appreciate some of the things you have taken for granted for a long time.

I miss my kitchen, or at least the use of it.  The kitchen table is still there, but it is covered in a tarp and covered with work-men's tools and drawings.  There is no place to prepare meals or place small appliances. But the new kitchen that is taking shape does look interesting.

I miss my living room.  Oh, it’s still there but it is now the home of a fridge, a microwave and a patio table to eat on.  It’s kind of crowded.  We can still sit in there, but it feels kind of crowded and you get confused why you’re there.

I miss my dining room.  It’s still there too, but you can’t dine there.  The dining table is covered with all of our dishes, some of them even clean.  There are no chairs in the room, but there is an extra desk that used to reside in the hallway.  The table is moved to one side of the room, so I now have to try and avoid, not always successfully, the light fixture that usually hangs over the table.

Our laundry room is now the pantry.  The powder room is now for the workmen.  So, I hide out a lot in my den which, at least for now, is still my den.  It is much quieter here than listening to the power tools being wielded downstairs.  That’s why you are getting light works of literature from me such as this piece.

I miss our stove.  It is hard to devise a menu when everything has to be cooked either on a barbeque or in a microwave.  There are such meals available and as people have said, “You can always order in”.  But as much as I like pizzas from Louis Pizza Express, you can only do that so often.

But I miss most the dishwasher. Humping baskets of dirty dishes down to the basement so they can be washed in the set-tub, which is the only sink big enough to wash them in, is just going too far.  Not only that but you then have to hump the clean dishes back up again and try and find places for them on the dining room table.  By the way, don’t forget to look for my next book, “The Advantages for Hand Drying Dishes with an Old Beach Towel versus a Dish Towel (A scientific study).”