So this is growing up

Saturday turned out to be a second moving day. Oh, it started out like any average Saturday ...

We sat around and drank coffee while the kids chased the cat around the house and fought over which toys were allowed to be played with and by whom ...

I kvetched about the laundry piling up and the dryer I didn't want ...

We shivered our way down to the village square where we treated ourselves to breakfast, and more bickering by the kids, and finally the farmers' market ...

When we got home and started the usual "OH WE'RE HOME, LET'S START CLEANING," which consists of shuffling junk piles into a more orderly configuration of junk piles ... as the kids shower their toys liberally into the new clearings. ...


But the van -- filled with estate furniture that had been graciously donated to us by his maternal aunt -- called to him: "EMPTY ME."

So in the middle of the day we combed through these new-to-us possessions, and quickly decided to replace our plastic-covered dining chairs, drag a couple of dressers into bedrooms, adopt a few standing lamps and swap TVs; ours for one of a more manageable size.

It was like another moving day with the driveway cluttered with stuff ...

Some staying ...

Some going ...

Some heading into storage for posterity ...

Some heading into storage for some future yard sale ...

Those blue chairs with the vinyl seats that we've been unsticking ourselves from after family meals ... banished, replaced by mismatched but perfectly lovely hardwoods.

My desk ... used for years as our dining room table ... went back to it's position in my office; circle fills the rectangle.

A corner cabinet ... for no other reason than it fits, as if it were built in.

A bench follows two end tables and a drop-leaf game table into the living room.

An embroided chair and a rocker ... too nice to stay downstairs where the cat will sharpen her claws on them ... are carried upstairs ...

I was amazed they all seemed to fit and make the rooms seem bigger.

We moved a Swiss-made precision instrument of a bed into the place that is my office … where the cat and a pile of homeless boxes live for now.

Will my "office" ever really be an office? Is it destined to be a guest bedroom? A cat’s lair? I think I’ll start calling it what it was destined to be: Swiss Army Room.

It may still be found furniture but it feels so much more grown up. After all, it wasn't found on garbage day.