It was at that moment — that very instant — that I realized I would never be able to travel into space. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t hack the confined spaces — the cramped quarters. I would go mad, get pushed over the edge by one too many floating piles of space mail. I would fry a circuit and undoubtedly start yanking on the air lock door until I was sucked out into the infinite darkness screaming the whole way, “finally free!”
What got me thinking this way? Well, we’ve reached the mission critical part of our house addition. We’re just a couple of weeks away from completion, which is exciting, but we’ve also hit that rough patch when walls that used to separate living quarters from the construction have come down. Now our house has really shrunk and it all seems to be closing in.
It was tight before, but we’re now experiencing life as canned sardines.
After a couple of days of living on top of each other while the drywall went in, I began to crack. “I just don’t understand why there are so many piles of stuff everywhere,” I complained. “It looks like the Himalayas in here.”
My wife gave me the kind of look that screamed, “If we had a shrimp deveiner you’d be in so much trouble right now.”
In unison, the piles began to laugh at me — a symphony of mocking. I considered torching them all.
A big plastic tent has been erected in our living room, shielding us from the dust and noise, but also cutting further into our habitat. My mother-in-law mentioned it looks like that scene in “E.T. the Extraterrestrial” when the government scientists come in and quarantine the house with the poor alien cooped up inside a big bubble.
We’re friggin’ E.T.!
It’s kind of like camping — if you want to shower or use the bathroom, you put on some flip-flops, squeeze through a seam in the plastic and trek off in search of relief, which is now on the other side of the wall.
Since it’s kind of hassle to do this, and I want to limit how many times I pass back and forth, I often make the mistake of waiting too long to, well, get relief. Suddenly in desperate pain, I end up running frantically through the house like a 6-year-old boy holding himself and screaming, “Look out, people! This bladder’s gonna’ blow.”
It’s no one’s fault — it’s just the way life is for a few days until the sanding is done and we can begin reclaiming some space. But it’s been a tough couple of days, and as close to living in a junkyard as I’ve been. There are spent rolls of duct tape, a rolled-up rug in the middle of the dining room, some clothes I neglected to fold, paint chips, Backyardigan stickers, and somewhere two overdue library books stuck behind wardrobes. Boxes sit here. Stereo speakers and chords there. Shoes are everywhere and there’s something under the sofa totally unidentifiable that I don’t want to try grabbing.
The dining room table has been shifted over so that half of it sits in front of the couch. I ate dinner at it the other night while sitting on two stacked sofa pillows. “This is what our lives have come to?” I said as the rest of the family snickered. “I need a booster seat just to eat dinner.”
You know, it isn’t that bad. It’s for such a short time, and we can see the finish line ahead. That’s reassuring. It also makes you appreciate what you have, and what you’re about to get. Not to mention it’s fun spending so much family time together, in an area the size of a mini Port-o-let.
But I sure am hungering for some of my own personal space again — any space — as long as it’s not up in the heavens crammed into a tin can. Thanks to this addition, my dreams of being an astronaut are certainly over.