this old house

*announcer voice* AND NOW - THE MOMENT YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR......

ABOUT THE HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*coughs* yes, it may not prove to be a very interesting post, but then again it may. I'll see what I can do with it. want to tell all y'all about my aunt and uncle's house here in Portland.

Let's go back in time to when I was very young. I don't know how young, because I've been coming here since before I was born, since my mom was about ten years old or so my aunt and uncle have lived here. Their house is humongous, like four thousand square feet or something ridiculous like that too, and built in the very early nineteen hundreds (1915 or thereabouts). It's a nice lightish green color, with a covered veranda supported by columns of stone. let's go us the old wooden steps and to the door that has to be at least twice as big as any door you've ever seen in your life, and purple, and you ring the doorbell - !ding-dong! Meanwhile the Cat Prince is rubbing against your legs, begging you to pick him up and drooling on you, and trying to convince you he hasn't been fed in a week or so. But the door turns in on it's massive hinges and the cat has to stay outside.

You are in a foyer, a rather large one, with the old coat rack to your right that looks so much like a mannakin, stairs in front of you leading up, and the living room through two large oak sliding panel doors to your left. We'll leave the upstairs to itself for now; let's go into the living room.

It is a large room, with bookshelves and cabinets built into the walls, and three large windows looking out onto the veranda. The whole house has a feel of being old and antiquated, but well-preserved, like a treasure found in an antique shop. A few floral-print couches stand in stiffness with tasseled pillows, refusing to mold to fit any shape of comfort. A glass-topped table holds foreign curiosities, many from India or Japan, collected by these world-travelers. But aside from the treasures of the bookshelves, this room holds not much of interest; let us move on.

The next room is the dining room/piano room. Being a very open floor plan, this is not quite as strange as it looks in print! You kind of move into an open area with a dining room table on the left, and a grand piano on the right (quite cluttered in piano music when I am here!), and a built-in china hutch thing against the wall straight ahead. Now which door shall you choose - to the right or to the left? Let us go to the left, into the kitchen.

The kitchen is spacious, and old, down to the stove and the fridge. an old gas range which must be lighted by hand, the sort of thing you might find, once again, in an antique shop or early twentieth-century house. Lots of couter space makes it a pleasure to cook in! to the back there is another door, leading to a short corridor, and eventually to the outside in the back of the house. But let us go right, past the door leading to the basement, and out by an opening on the right (where the earlier door we by-passed would have taken us). To the right is the dining/piano room, and to the left a hallway. turn left. the two rooms to your right are bedrooms, only one of which has a bed, the other much clutter and memories in tangible form. Let us not forget the "nerd hole" as the computer closet has been affectionately dubbed! The second bedroom is home to many pictures long-forgotten in drawers, remembered after the removal of a thick layer of dust by a curious young girl, or perhaps merely a bored young girl. Perhaps a mix of both.

At the end of this hall is the bathroom. Here when I was young I thought for sure the bathtub was a monster, as evidence by the four beast-like claws supporting its massive shape, waiting to devour me! now i know better...

perhaps you should like to take a short tour of the upstairs? you would? come! follow me!

The stairs are creaky, but stable, so do not worry. at the top we meet with more that two doors, we meet with a mystery...

long ago, at a Thanksgiving in this very house, when I was quite young (probably eight or nine), we were all together, including some friends the E's. they had a son named Carl, about twelve or thirteen at the time, and we spent much of the evening together in these old sacred haunts, a wide-eyed girl listening to the tale of the Hound of the Baskervilles (and somehow the Matrix got sprinkled in there too), wondering with a dash of incredulity if the story could really be true, related by such a "big kid." He swore it was, and I cannot say that I did not actually believe him for the most part by the time he got to the cliff-hanger and stopped, telling me I would have to read it for myself in the future. It was indeed a night of mysteries, and as we climbed higher and higher into the thousand-year old cedar outside, we met with the most capital sort of one any one could wish: the house extended on the top beyond my aunt and uncle's room! Of course our young minds had never considered that the top of the house might be somewhat proportional to the bottom, and we wondered indeed what was all this extra space we had never seen was? After climbing back down through magical spider-webs, we snuck upstairs while the adults were occupied elsewhere. two doors: where did the second one lead? Being children, we turned the handle. the door swung noiselessly open.....

I'm just kidding, the handle turned but the door didn't open. We went back downstairs where my mom met us and solved the "mystery" by explaining that my aunt and uncle loaned out the extra space to renters, and we weren't allowed up there. does it seem strange to you that I have never seen 800 square feet of a house I have known so well? perhaps yes, perhaps no. we returned to the bedroom, with red pills, blue pills, and glowing footprints.













I'll write more about dinner and stuff tomorrow, after we get home, but I'm tired now and I'm going to bed. G'night ya'll!!