Futon to go
Today I focused my attention on the house. I started by cleaning the kitchen because when the kitchen is clean everything else seems more possible. The rest of the day was spent organizing my office and the storage room. We’re planning to start producing merchandise other than books and I really need a place to put it all. The time has come for my office to eschew doubling as a guest room and admit that it is just an office. The futon has been evicted and shelves were put up instead. I’m still not done in there, but it is a start.
The futon is currently taking up space in the family room. Howard and I had discussed putting it in the front room, but after watching the antics today I don’t want it there. The kids were all very excited about the new family room furniture. First they discovered that if they hit the mattress, dust came puffing out. Then they discovered that they could lift it into a bed or fold it into a couch. This was highly amusing to them and highly nerve wracking to me. I kept hearing Thump-CRASH as they switched it back and forth. The frame of the futon is metal and made a lovely CLANG sound. I could just picture smashed limbs and I forbade them to fold it out anymore. I declared it to be a couch and only a couch.
But this was not the end of the fascination with the futon. The kids discovered that if they pushed the mattress out of the way, the back of the couch configuration made a great jail. They would stand on the mattress with their backs against the slats. Their hands would be shoved behind them through the slats as if they’d been handcuffed. We had four neighbor kids over and this whole elaborate game evolved including the jail, a jailer, and 6 kids all being pokemon, or unicorns, or whatever. It was cute to see them all lined up there, but extremely chaotic and noisy.
They climbed. They jumped. They argued. Fortunately no damage was done to either futon or kids, but it was a close thing multiple times. I think the futon needs a new home and we need to invest in an airbed for guests.