I call a re-do!

Tonight Joe and I got busy - yeah, you know what I'm talking about! We rearranged the living room. (Your mind was in the gutter, wasn't it?) We are weirdly in love with rearranging furniture and in our last apartment (where we lived 2 years), TINY as it was (520 sq. ft), we managed to completely rearrange about every 3 months. I think 6 months is the longest we've ever gone without moving a thing, and December hit that 6-month mark. I don't know if it's because we love changing our minds or our furniture or simply adore waking up to muscle pain, but we MUST MOVE THINGS. Frequently.

Tonight started out simply enough - we were going to finally switch out couches around. We have two couches - a love seat and a "cuddler," which is neither a love seat nor a single seat, but something in-between. The cuddler couch was next to the front door, the light switch, the reading lamp, the sliding glass door so it gets all the direct sunlight, and it directly faced the TV. This "cuddler" would work extremely well for a morbidly obese person, as there is no crack to get stuck in since there's only one butt pillow, and the arm rests are definitely far enough apart, but neither one of us is morbidly obese and we're far enough into our marriage that we don't feel the need to cuddle to prove our love for one another. Yep, we're that comfortable. (Also, we no longer feel the need to turn on the fan to drown out bathroom noises. That's when you know the "mystery" is disappearing). So you can see that the "cuddler" couch was obviously in the wrong place! All the amenities with none of the space. So we were halfway through this simple switch when we decided perhaps we should rearrange the couches entirely; now instead of facing one another they are perpendicular, with a space to walk between them. We found lots to lvoe in this new arrangement: one couch now faces the Christmas tree, so we can bask in the glow of twinkle lights (a Christmas MUST); both couches face the TV; the perpendicular couch gets light from the kitchen; and (most importantly) it is NEW and DIFFERENT.

Since the love seat is longer than the cuddler, furniture around the couches needed to be rearranged, as it no longer fit. And all this moving brings to mind an idea I had about moving our giant kind-sized behomoth of a bed with an entire wardrobe of stuff packed away underneath it.... and with the bed in a new spot, creating more floorspace, I was thinking the rocking chair from Patrick's room would work better in here instead... and as long as the rocking chair is getting moved, couldn't we move Patrick's bed to the other wall?... and if the bed is against that other wall, we'd have more room for..... YOU GET THE IDEA. So the every room in our oh-so-much-larger (815 sq ft) apartment is NEW and DIFFERENT.

Of course, all this moving makes for a VERY MESSY HOUSE (every room, remember?) that we're planning on cleaning up....soon...er than later. Some time, we'll clean it all up, I'm sure of it. Right now, my muscle ache. So while sitting and reading and enjoying our NEW and DIFFERENTLY messy house instead of CLEANING said mess, Joe's bud from school stops by. This is a 22-year old college kid, not married, I'm sure he couldn't care less about how clean (or unclean) our living room is, but in those few minutes he stood in our entry I found that my mother is (and possibly always was) right to think that it is embarassing to have guests see a messy house! More than that, a destroyed house, where we're sitting and reading books and not caring that in order to sit on our newly-rearranged couches you have to remove 3 layers of toys, blankets, and possibly some kitchen utensils (???). Just like that, I'm all fired up to clean the house, but not just to clean it and leave it be - I want his friend to come back here and see how darn spankin' clean it is! I call a do-over! So now if anyone wants to come visit, PLEASE give me at least 3o minutes notice so I can put my book down and get those mixing bowls off the couch :)