Adventures Going Home

Sleeping at my parents' house has become an adventure, in a way. Especially when my sister and her husband are over. (The ones, mind you, who don't have kids. It's even more of an adventure trying to find a place to sleep with munchkins underfoot. Although with nephews and niece as cute as mine, any annoyance quickly diminishes.)

Anyway, before my brother returned home from his mission, his bed was the officially nominated guest bed. And rightly so--it's a queen-sized bed. And it's also the only other bed confined to a bedroom. There's a hide-a-bed in the couch upstairs, and the leather couch in the basement isn't so heinously uncomfortable it's impossible to crash there. But it was nice to sleep on a regular bed.

Those days are gone. My little brother now gets to sleep in his bed. Last night, my brother-in-law and sister claimed the leather couch. My dad wakes up ridiculously early now that he has to work four ten-hour days instead of five eight-hour days, so he's been relegated to the upstairs couch. And that left me smashed into the sewing room on an air mattress.

But at least it was the good air mattress. The big one. Not the twin size air mattress I slept on the last time I'd been home. When I slept on that air mattress, I turned just a little in the night, and found myself plunked on to the floor. And yes, I bruised as a result. (Thankfully, most of them weren't noticeable. And in regard to the bruise people did notice, I just told them I must have run into something. Technically--I did. I ran into the floor. But I wasn't about to tell them that.)

Still, I remember the days I used to have a bed at that house. That house carried a certain hint of permanence to it. For a short while, I was the boomerang child--I could move out of the house, but there was always a place to move back to.

That, alas, is no longer the case. My former bedroom is no more. My dad, my brother, and my brother-in-law knocked out walls to expand the front room . . . and my former bedroom has merged with the living room.

This means that though Centerville will always be home, I will never be living there again. It's kind of an odd feeling.

A minor change. Nothing I can't handle. But when Bon Jovi asks, "Who says you can't go home?" My response is now: my dad and his sledge hammer. Obviously.