A Room Of One's Own

My family wants to see pictures of my room, so here they are. Simon is happy to model for the photo shoot, somehow wiggling his way into almost every photo. (Aah Simon, my feral heart wrapped in brown tabby fur. His summer caretaker told me he never crawled under the covers at her house because she made the bed every day. A little OCD? Just kidding, I know I'm messy but I made the bed for the photos).


The trick to living in a room 100 sq ft (perhaps smaller) is that everything serves two functions. The bed has storage underneath it-- if you look closely you can see the drawers built into the frame (though at the moment only one of the three drawers contains any possessions). The small wooden table/desk on wheels at the end of the bed doubles as a filing cabinet:


The closet has the litterbox. In the corner to the left, outside the closet, my hiking backpack (i.e. the only piece of luggage I own) and sleeping bag are resting against the wall. If you are wondering about the bag of fluids hanging in the closet, well that is because I give subcutaneous fluids to my chronic renal failure kitty, Lindy, every day.


So far the only artwork on my wall is this piece which I picked up at the Eastern farmer's market in Washington, DC. My friends Eagle Eyes and Corvid own the same piece and I like to look at it and think of how they admire crows too. (Hi Eagle Eyes! Hi Corvid!)


I feed Simon on a place mat so that he doesn't make a mess with his wet food on the hardwood floor. With my perverse sense of humor, I choose to feed him on a parasite place mat that I picked up at a conference in San Francisco a few years back. Somehow no one else seems to think this is as funny or clever as I do but I don't know why that is.


Lindy is a more private creature and often prefers to have her meals served under the wooden table/filing cabinet. The white stuff on the bamboo mat is clay litter she has tracked to her hiding spot. Cutting down on my cats tracking litter out of the litterbox and into the room is one of my biggest challenges, but with enough rugs and bath mats in the closet, most of the litter seems to stay in there and I can just wash the mats periodically.


Those of you who know me well may have noticed there are no books in the room. My much cherished collection of poetry and a few California field guides are stored in boxes in the garage. I may unpack them (how long can I go without reading Audre Lord or consulting Adrienne Rich, not to mention deriving inspiration from Simon Armitage and Yehudah Amichai?) at some point but for the moment I like the room bare. The two or three books I am currently reading are tucked in one of the drawers under the bed along with a few CDs and some chargers for my computer, camera and phone. That's about it folks.