Beck - Gamma Ray (Modern Guilt)

Good is good. Fun is fun. THIS is both.

guest room

Guest quarters at my mom's house ... Something to strive for!

The sad day my college-bound boy packed his last box and drove to his new apartment had only one silver lining: I'd get my bedroom back.


The three of us have made this lovely two-bedroom rental home for more than four years. Prior to moving here, I'd been desperate to get out of very large house with a man who turned out to be, let's say, not as nice as I thought he'd be. I found this little place and fell in love. But only two bedrooms. I'd give my 14 and 11 year olds their own personal spaces in exchange for my own makeshift bedroom smack-dab in the middle of our living room. Thus has been our existence for the past 52 months.


So when the day came when the room upstairs became suddenly vacant, you'd think I'd make quick work out of hiring able-bodied dudes to haul my bedroom belongings upward. I stalled for a week, then a month. Then one day I woke up and clearly realized the truth: I like it down here. The way my mother's antique bed and chest of drawers looks in this grand room. Being close to the couch, TV, and family computer. Midnight snacks in the kitchen. Who cares if someone walks into my living room and sees an unmade bed where a Lazy Boy recliner should be? I'm so over that.


What I could use, I deducted, was a fabulous guest room for visiting friends and family. It would allow me to be the gracious hostess I've always wanted to be, offering meals cooked with love and lovely accommodations including pristine bedding, lace curtains, and fresh flowers on the nightstand. And even though it would be a total girl's room (are there any other kind of guest quarters?), my son would always have a place to hang his hat. An ideal way to better connect with the ones I love pretty much landed in my lap — the ultimate blessing in the form of 144 square feet.


A few new things, a few old things. The new guest quarters are quickly coming together.


I paid a couple of guys to lift my son's old bed and couch down the stairs and to the driveway for the Goodwill pickup, but to my disappointment I discover Goodwill doesn't accept bulky sleeper couches. The tank sat on the edge of the driveway sporting a FREE sign for over a week. And just when I began devising the impossible scenario of hauling the monolith to the city dump, there was a knock on the door. An old acquaintance who didn't even know I lived here was moving out of her house and making a new start — just she and her daughter now. She asked if the couch was still available.


Who knew furniture — or the lack of it — could be so healing?

from within

"The truth feels like the biggest sucker-punch of them all: it’s not a spouse or land or a job or money that brings us happiness. Those achievements, those relationships, can enhance our happiness, yes, but happiness has to start from within. Relying on any other equation can be lethal."


Laura Munson's book "This Is Not the Story You Think It Is" is brilliant. Her approach to keeping a marriage together wouldn't have worked in my situation, but it might have had I chosen the right guy to begin with. Here's a sneak peek of the book from the New York Times.


This lovely photo collage was created by my talented daughter Melissa Mathieson.