Red and I got married 14 years ago and he was living in a pretty compact apartment in the city, close to where he used to work back in the day. It was a rental, we had very little furniture and tried to make it a cozy space with some brightly coloured cushions, sheets and a few paintings on the wall. But for the most part it wasn’t a place we were terribly enthu about living in long term.
We lived there for a few months and moved into our first home- along with a mortgage, luggage and added on books, some things here and there and a kid. It was an overall peaceful albeit a slightly dull life in patches. I say in patches because once TO arrived, we forgot what it was like to have time to think about life before kids.
I was still working a regular 9-5 back then and Red’s always been WORKING so the house was literally a crash pad and for living over the weekends. We entertained very little and it came alive once the brat was born. It was then his domain entirely!
In the fag end of circa 2013 we moved to the current place we live in now. This is our own place too and we moved in with slightly lesser number of books, more kiddy stuff, yet another mortgage and a spring in our steps. We’ve really been living it up here compared to how our lives where in the old house. Each one of us has friends, a well-define social circle but we’ve also had enough of run-ins with hammers, chisels, building, breaking and rebuilding stuff too. TO is so firmly ensconced here that any sign of any change, even it is something he likes later on, gets on his nerves.
After 7 years of living here, we felt the place needed some upgrades, mostly functional changes, nothing major but changes nonetheless and those began yesterday. We have a good friend who has a very good eye for design, optimisation of space and aesthetics overall and she’s drawn up a few things that Red and I are quite kicked about. But to TO, it’s just a bunch of people coming into his space to break things, make the place look unfamiliar and he’s not a happy camper. He’s looking at people coming into his house to make changes and even if those changes are to take out shelves where we were storing junk, he wants it kept int toto- no change, nothing, NADA!
When I tried to show him the 3D renditions that were shown to us about the proposed changes he sniffed, turned his nose up at it and said that doesn’t look like our house at all. So I let him be. In another day or so he’ll see the biggest advantage to having workers around for most of the day- his parents being busier than ever and not being able to keep an eagle eye on him and whether he’s actually in his classes or in a galaxy far, far away…beatboxing away to his heart’s content.
Note: That’s the new fad and he’s pretty decent at memorising the songs he’s seen online and singing them word for word. This is the same child who routinely forgets to do at least one part of a two-part job on a daily basis…SIGH
But stay tuned for more home improvement pictures…and now I must away for there is a cup of tea with my name on it and I want to enjoy it while the brat and his father slumber deeply. There’s a tree where the leaves and the drying pods of the fruit rustle in the leaves and it’s very soothing and almost hypnotic in the darkness. It’s a while before it’ll be sunrise and the neighbors are awakening, starting their morning walks and in a few hours there’ll be some more banging of hammers along the gripes of child who’s suddenly grown an attachment to wooden shelves and there’ll be me- drinking coffee and counting days till she runs her hands over every single new inch of her home that she’ll spend the rest of her life trying to keep clean.
Cheers!
Random. Structured. Haphazard. All Me. 