We Moved All the Furniture

We moved all the furniture out-of-the-way of the carpet layers

except the really heavy Ethan Allen

 

love seat sofa-bed we keep in the living room so it can function as a second

bedroom in a one bedroom

 

condo in case family or friends visit or we are having an argument.

Two big guys can lug it off the old

 

carpet onto the tile in the little dining area.  Almost everything else is Ikea-lite –

credenza, end tables, lamps.

 

We put stuff on the tiny balcony, stuffed stuff in the dining area and

watched T.V. the evening

 

before the carpet layers arrived on the new 32 inch, flat screen, H.D.

T.V. on a wicker basket

 

with a left over tile from the dining area on top which just happens

to fit perfectly.

 

I sit in the 300 square foot living room part of the 660 square foot

condo which now with the

 

furniture out feels like a mansion.  My wife just walked out of the previously

teensy and now

 

cavernous kitchen, stepped an infinite number of steps across the once really small dining

area, reached up to the heavens and

 

turned off the light. She stepped out of the deep, deep tunnel of distance

into the now huge

 

formal living area.  I could hardly see her coming.  She seemed so far away.

I’ll be so glad to get

 

our little condo back after we move the Ikea-lite stuff back into place

along with the heavy

 

Ethan Allen love seat so I won’t feel like an exploiter of the earth, a grabber

of great gobs of real

 

estate and the Duke of an English nineteenth century Dukedom.

Because of global warming

 

and an obscenely warm last week in April back home in West Michigan

where the tulips are

 

now gone and the officials wait for the start of the dreaded stem

festival, I, still in the parched

 

desert, start to think seriously about the possibility of the last twenty

years of life in a

 

10’ by 11’ Dick’s New Year’s Day $40 special Coleman tent with access

to electricity in the McDowell

 

Regional Park camp ground for watching DVDs on an old worn out Mac

and plugging in the little

 

space heater to keep the cold out when the sun goes down in the

desert with a bathhouse close

 

enough for nocturnal visits when the slightest sound evokes a chorus

of coyote calls and morning

 

showers before I stumble in the dust, fall and gasp my last breath as the

hundred-year-old Chocolate Lab

 

licks my face as I give up the ghost just as the last twenty years were

getting started and

 

the guys were moving the Ethan Allen love seat back into place

on the new carpet.