If Mother Nature cooperates, my son will be home for our belated Christmas in two weeks. I am, as you may have noticed, a bit excited. Because HWDDD is in a bowling tournament that weekend, my son and I will be coming to Absarokee to spend the holiday without him. If all of us were coming, we would stay in a hotel, but since it's just the two of us, we are staying with my dad.
The room my son will be sleeping in used to be my bedroom. My dad remodeled our house in the 60's and foolishly let me choose my own carpet. My choice was an impossble-to-keep-up gold shag carpet, which is still in the room (trust me, the reason I brought up the carpet will become obvious once you see the "after" photos).
After I graduated and moved out, it became a guest room. When my mom was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, it was necessary for her to have her own room, so we moved her in there. After she passed away from cancer (which I blame on the various treatments they used to try to keep her RA in check, but that is a rant for another post), the room became a catch-all for everything you can imagine and some things you cannot. My dad is a pack-rat and has a hard time throwing stuff away, especially if it has anything (and I do mean anything) to do with mom.
In anticipation of my son's visit, I decided to go through the room, cleaning and decluttering as I went. Since my brother was on night shifts and my dad was sleeping late, I had the house to myself. I started at around 9 am and finally finished about 5 pm. When I was done, the back of the pickup was completely full of junk. I saved all of the important mom memorabilia; there's no way I'd ever get rid of that. I did, however, throw away a lot of things I really don't want my family members knowing about.
Anyway, here is the end result. My son knows what the "before" picture looked like (I'm too ashamed to post a picture of that) and I want him to see the "after". Does your mom love you or what?
The bed was covered with cardboard boxes from my brother's new surround sound system. I disposed of the boxes and added a 4 inch thick foam mattress top. The "lovely" bedspread is circa 1970; it goes with the beautiful gold shag carpet.
Prior to the clean-a-thon, this entire area was covered with miscellaneous items including dozens of plastic coffee cans that my dad was saving for er, um, well, I dunno. There were boxes jammed full of empty ice cream containers, old books, old vcr tapes and various and sundry medical supplies that were used by my dear mother, may she rest in peace.
I had planned to bore you with more photos, but it took over an hour to upload the two that are here (did I mention lately how much I hate dial-up internet?), so you will just have to imagine how beautimous the gold shag *ack* carpet looks in the newly spiffed up room.
Anyway, if anyone other than my son has managed to read this far, congratulations on your tenacity (and my sympathy goes out to you for not having anything better to do) and son, not only did I spend 8 hours cleaning your room, I also spent well over an hour on this lame ass post. I love you bunches and I will see you in 12 days and 22 hours and 4 minutes, not that I'm counting or anything.
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