Today, I move back to my old house. I'm not sure how I feel about this.
It's not that I really mind moving back with my parents*. For some inexplicable reason, I am included in the very small minority of 20-somethings who still get along fairly well with their parents. And while it cuts me to the quick to have to live in a house for free when I could instead live in a poorly ventilated room somewhere in the neighbourhood for $400/month, I can't complain about it too much. I don't even really dread returning to a house occupied by two of the largest, hairiest, smelliest cats known to man; as it is, I've spent the last few days living in a cloud of sparkles, so living in a cloud of cat hair won't be that different.
It's my bedroom itself that I'm avoiding. My bedroom and I have been at odds for many years. I vaguely remember a time when we managed to fit not only me but my sister as well into this postage-stamp-sized room (with a minimal amount of bruising). Either the amount of random crap I have to fit into the room has grown exponentially over the years, or the fact that I'm 2 and a half feet taller now is causing more problems to my general space requirement than I had at first thought. One would think that a 5 and a half foot woman could occupy the same amount of space as two 3-foot tall girls would be able to fill. In fact, said woman should have more room than two small girls would. Not so. As the years rolled on, I got larger, the room got smaller, and the room and I stopped agreeing with eachother on most issues.
Every few months, I do something new to it. I rearrange the furniture, buy a new mattress, paint the walls, glue potato chip bags to the ceiling, copy out a soliloquy from Hamlet in marker behind the closet. None of these things have managed to make the room larger, however.
Not only have I failed in making the room large enough to fit me, I've actually succeeded in making it smaller. For some reason, adding an excessively tall closet, a desk, and a nightstand to the mix have done nothing to increase the amount of space I have (even if I do shove half my clothes under the bed now). These editions were part of a project I undertook last year, when I was under the misguided impression that it wouldn't matter if nothing in my room fit, if only most of the things would at least match.
Now I will return to my room with a purple desk chair I nabbed from an office that was being renovated; a coffee maker (also free) that I was very excited about and used to an unhealthy degree for at least 2 weeks; a blender that, being free, I couldn't help but take, even if I knew that I only had a month left living on my own and then I would move back in with my parents and their own blender (which is, ironically, the same model, and is also missing the lid stopper, just like this one)**. I simply won't be able to fit in the place any more.
Which is why I have begun to plan out the hostile takeover of my brother's room. My brother, as I said, occupies the east half of the top floor of our house. I occupy only a quarter of the top floor, leaving another quarter of room for the sewing room (the bathroom, being the size of a closet, takes up negligible space). Now, I unfortunately gave away my fully-functioning, real live sword to my brother several years ago, leaving me virtually weaponless. Although Ben took that sword and traded it to a fellow swordsman in exchange for the return of his signature pirate hat, that was by no means his only weapon of defense. Walking into Ben's room is like walking into an armory. His collection of throwing knives, short swords, halbards, archery supplies, and ornamental daggers is as dazzling as it is baffling (considering that he is a 20-year-old Mennonite boy living in a residential area of a frigid Canadian city, and not a young Earl preparing for a civil war in 12th-century England). In comparison, my biggest weapon would be the 2 foot long ornamental walking stick that spends most of its time leaning in one corner or the other of my room. No, I won't be able to take him by force.
It will have to be a sneak attack. The key to the plan is Cleaning Days.
On Cleaning Days, willing participants rove around our house picking up the out-of-place piles of unwilling participants' belongings and shoving these belongings into the unwilling participants' rooms. The unwilling participant generally ignores the pile of stuff that has been placed in the middle of his or her floor until it is tall enough to trip over (or if there is something useful sticking out of it), at which point the pile is either shoved to the side, or dismantled and spread out over a number of shelves, desks, and chairs in the bedroom.
On every cleaning day, I shall begin placing Ben's belongings in my room, creating a pile of my own belongings in the middle of Ben's bedroom floor. By the time Ben realizes what I am doing, all of his most important possessions will be in my bedroom; all of mine will be in his, and then it's just a matter of luring him out and shutting the door on him, and the room will be mine. And luckily, since he never ventures onto the hallowed pages of this blog, he will be taken completely by surprise.
*the jury is out on whether my parents really mind me moving back in with them, of course. However, as long as my incredibly useful younger brother continues to carry out virtual military onslaughts from the top East bedroom, and continues to take up the garage, back street, front street, and neighbours' garage with his many cars, I feel only minimally guilty about continuing to live with them. After all, if they must live with one grown-up offspring of theirs, surely living with two of us can't make much difference.
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