Enjoy the Show

Let me welcome you to our house.

Immediately on your right when you step in is a formal living room. Because we're big on first impressions, it still contains moving boxes of decorations that have yet to be hung in rooms that have yet to be painted. No matter that we moved in five months ago.

Oh, and there's no furniture, well, none save the collection of unplaced side tables I have crammed in one corner. We like to call this room "The Lego Room" since they regularly strew the carpet where furniture should be.

In addition to serving as the collecting place for Lego's, children's toys in general, and all things miscellaneous, this grand room has also has held wrestling matches, dance-offs, book fairs and library openings, farmer's markets, and most often, concerts. 

If you've visited us in the past couple months, chances are you have been treated to a performance on a cardboard stage in this fine arena with dingy white carpet. The show likely consisted primarily of a tall, skinny kid with one missing front tooth shuffling his feet and thinking he looks pretty awesome "dancing" for you.

Usually there's an accompanying little drummer in a princess dress who beats on a cardboard box with a curtain rod that has yet to be hung. (Why do they love those curtain rod-sword-lightsaber-mallets so?) The little drummer will occasionally rise for a solo rendering of "Jesus Loves Me" or perhaps "Twinkle, Twinkle."

Then it's back to more of the Fast Feet Kid, until about the time the audience concludes their clapping with loud, suggestive compliments about the show - in the past-tense, hoping to in fact bring about it's conclusion.

There may be tickets, wrist bands, seat assignments, refreshments... you name it. As I was informed last time, there is not, however, any flash photography permitted. So you'll have to come see for yourselves.

While I would very much like to have furniture in this room, and would very, very much like to no longer have boxes and stacked projects (and those dang curtain rod/weapons), I must admit that a big, empty room is pretty convenient with kids. Even if it is right off the entryway... with a huge picture window looking out onto the sidewalk for all to see.

So this here is my anti-pin. It is me saying, no Pinteresters, every room is not perfect in a normal house. Nor does it have to be. Sometimes a room just needs to sit empty or messy - or both - for five months. Or ten.

I like to call this "embracing the practical." It is enjoying the cardboard stage from the endless boxes.

It is enjoying the show.