The Meandering Mind

As you saw in the last post, the train has a prominent place in the dining room. There was quite a process to get it there, all starting with a bright idea of mine.

Yes – I was the cause of the three weekends being overtaken by moving tons of furniture around this apartment. Since we’ve had a LOT of experience moving over the last 6-7 years, the internal move was pretty much a breeze.

Sad.

Well, it began with Chris telling me about one of many play or movie ideas he has spinning around in his head constantly. I said, “You know, honey, you really should have your very own creative space to work out these ideas and write them down and not get distracted by me sitting at a desk right behind you. We should move the train to where my desk is now, and my desk into the bedroom where the train is!”

Silly girl. Who did I think was going to help him move the behemoth out of the bedroom? Not only that, but the rest of the furniture? No matter. I wanted to make this happen for the most creative love of my life. 🙂

Here we go:

 

 

 

 

It’s pretty amazing that we got it out of the bedroom at all, since the doorway is 6′ 1/2″ x 2′ 1/2″ and the train is 8′ x 3′ and it doesn’t bend. At all. Chris almost sawed it in half, but we made it work in one piece.

 

 

 

That was it for the damage! Not a problem to fix – they were able to be glued back on.

 

 

Or maybe the train was peeking in, wanting to get back inside. We’ll never really know.

 

 

 

We thought it would easily make it through the 3′ wide hallway. We didn’t take into consideration the molding which took up about an inch of space. SO CLOSE! Still, it wasn’t going back into the bedroom, so we crossed our fingers (mentally – we were kind of busy with the table) and SOMEHOW … we got it through!

I should mention that we had to take the legs off the table – all six of them – so that we could get it through the door. Once we were in the living room, they had to be put back on. We couldn’t set the train down on anything, really, because there is a crazy tangle of wires underneath for the lights. So …

 

 

I held one end while the other end (no wires in the way) sort of balanced on a table until Chris could come around and screw on the legs. I asked him to take this picture, so don’t think he was off taking a nap while I built up my biceps.

Once the train was assembled, we moved everything into position:

 

 

 

Doesn’t that look nice?

It does (DID), but the train was kind of overtaking the space. We had to move a bookshelf next to Chris’s desk (upper right in the picture) to make room, and the red chair on the left (Matilda’s chair, for all intents and purposes) was forced too far into the living room. So … time to make another change.

Oh boy.

I was just starting to heal from my last encounter with the train:

 

 

Isn’t that a beaut? Such a pretty color …

Anyway, the Feng Shui of the apartment was suffering – especially with my computer in the bedroom. Plus, if I were sitting in bed against the wall reading a magazine or book and Chris was playing music through his computer against the opposite side of the wall where my head was (not loud but still audible) … it just wasn’t going to work. A simple fix like wearing headphones wasn’t going to do, either. No. I had ANOTHER brilliant and exhausting idea.

Kim: Hey, hon. Let’s move the bed to the opposite side of the wall like we talked about last week when I said we should wait a while so your back could have a chance to heal. Then, let’s move my desk out into the dining room and move the Victrolas into the bedroom along with the brown dresser? Doesn’t that sound like a good idea?

Chris: OKAY!!

I didn’t think he’d be that excited about it, but he was. So it began again:

 

 

Wasn’t that pretty?

 

 

 

 

Finished, right? No. After that exhausting move, we collapsed on the couch (me) and chair (Chris) and sort of quietly stared at my desk. We didn’t speak, but we knew. We knew my desk and piano could not live there. No, sir. The area went from looking beautiful to looking all cluttered and junky. There was no way we could live with that. The feng shui was all messed up. We weren’t any better than when we started. We tore ourselves off of the couch and chair and proceeded to move things around … AGAIN.

We put my desk back to where it began in the first place weeks ago and moved the train to the area where my desk was sitting in the dining room, and … voila!

 

 

 

 

Perfection!!

There is nothing else to move and we just signed our lease renewal so … there! This configuration will stay!

Hooray!