Up The Down Staircase

Entry 1

Saturday morning it is. Abby and I have two more Saturdays, this one included, before Holyoke. I am blue this early morning, for a bevy of reasons,  none controlling. The soft trumpet on Brubeck's Take Five sounds melancholy, but I'm sure my ears are just distorted by my mood.

Flu shots today, clothes shopping for Abby. I may go to Dick's Sporting Goods and get the spin bike that Amazon was supposed to deliver on Thursday, but

balked. I'm going to go buy some small concrete bricks to border a portion of the yard where berry plants have been planted. Other things are on the too list and I hope to tackle them all.

When I grew up in our 800 square foot home, most of the time I lived in the bedroom above the garage, which was tiny, had a closet with  painted plywood walls, Parquet floors and wolf spiders. Abby has an 1100 square foot apartment, with a bath, bedroom, living room with a built-in surround sound system and video projector, a kitchen with a full-sized refrigerator, a sink and microwave. Oh, and her own patio also.

The stairway connecting Abby's domain with the main floor of the house has not been visible since we moved in. She had to weave a narrow path between all of her stuff she had piled up on those stairs to reach her living quarters. A couple of days ago, I opened the door to the stairway only to discover that the way downstairs was cleared. She is so excited and ready to go. 

Why didn't I ever ask her to clean the stairs? There were so many things I didn't care about, or just let go because I just don't care or because it would be a battle.

Street Art on Serge Gainsbourg's home, Paris, July 2018.
 
Jenny used to rage about Abby's room, get angry when it wasn't clean, and talk about what her mother would have done had her room looked like the aftermath of a tornado as Abby's did from time to time. To me, if there is a door, so long as you aren't leaving food about or other things that might attract rodents or bugs, closing the door is the perfect solution. Keeping the door to the basement stairs closed has been easy.

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