{"id":4686,"date":"2019-05-06T08:39:40","date_gmt":"2019-05-06T06:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4686"},"modified":"2022-10-24T19:22:00","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T17:22:00","slug":"kitchen-dweller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4686","title":{"rendered":"Kitchen Dweller"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Morning work station. Pen. Notebook. Coffee. Cookies within reach. Check. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m in the kitchen writing. It\u2019s a rainy Sunday morning, I\u2019m sipping coffee and clicking away at the keyboard. From ground level, I hear a short growl and then I feel a paw on my thigh. That cat wants up. I lift my left arm and she vaults onto my thigh and sits there as though it\u2019s December in a mall and she\u2019s about to tell me about the Chewbacca Lego kit she wants me to bring her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She tentatively makes the leap to the table, where she roams\naround before settling behind my computer. She comes back to my side, stares at\nthe screen and offers small editing advice in disgruntled chirps. When she\u2019s\nhad enough, she splits off into the living room, where she does some facsimile\nof the same thing to Burke. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My new flat has three main rooms in which one doesn\u2019t poop or\nshower. Living room, bedroom, and kitchen. They are all pleasant in their own\nway. The living room windows look onto the backyard and so it\u2019s peacefully quiet.\nIt gets no direct light in the morning, so it\u2019s mellow and cool and it gets a\nnice breeze. The bedroom gets that nice morning light and the room is usually\nwarm and comfy. It\u2019s also about .0007 seconds closer to the bathroom than the\nliving room, which can be important to men in their advancing years. The\nkitchen is cozy, cool, and bright. Plus, it\u2019s where my cookies and coffee live.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Whenever I go home and stay at my parents\u2019 house, I know just\nwhere to find them and what they\u2019re doing. Without fail. My dad is usually sitting\nat the kitchen table and my mom is somewhere in the living room. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My dad sits in the only chair he will use \u2013 the soft-backed\none that has acquired the mood and temperament of a Berlin war relic. In front of\nhim are a book, a Nook, two pens, and the remote control, which is covered in\nsomething sweet: lemon filling, chocolate syrup, powdered sugar. The fridge is\na two-step trek. The television, about three and a half feet away, is showing\nbaseball or a B movie in black and white. It is at such a volume that the\nneighbors weigh in on the umpire\u2019s questionable calls.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once my mom puts away the shopping, makes dinner, does the\ndishes, and then cleans the kitchen there\u2019s no reason for her to be in there.\nShe moves to the living room, where she will be found perched above the\nbusiness end of a laundry basket, packing school lunches for her grandkids, or\nputting together some odd gadget that she found in Target and whose existential\ngoal is surprisingly specific. It\u2019s a\nwire hanger straightener. That machine cleans the bottom of lamps.<\/em> The\ntelevision is showing Law and Order<\/em>,\na left-leaning political talk show, or a Philadelphia Eagles game. If my sister\nis with her, the TV may be showing a Hallmark Christmas movie. This will also\nbe evidenced by the pained look being partially concealed on my mom\u2019s face. Somewhere\nin this room is a bowl of popcorn or chips. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, while I was growing up, this was 100%\nopposite. My dad was always in the living room and my mom did her work in the kitchen.\nHe watched our main TV and she watched the black and white TV on the kitchen\ncounter. As a kid, I found this to be the most prominent difference between the\nsexes \u2013 men sat in the living room and women hung out in the kitchen. Both parties\nexisted there minding their own, but mostly hoping the other party would just\nleave them be. For the most part, this wish was granted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I have found that I am a kitchen dweller. I like writing\nin the kitchen in the morning and even watching television here when I\u2019m done.\nI cook every day and I\u2019ll watch a show on my laptop on the counter. I read here,\ndo office work, and write emails. There\u2019s a nice window that gets light at all\ntimes of the day. Plus I find it comforting to watch my neighbors shuffle to or\nfrom work. And the cookies are always within reach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burke is a living room dweller. She works in there, teaching\nonline classes. She cuts up cards and pictures and builds microphones and other\nobjects I can\u2019t quite decipher. Is that a\ndog\u2019s ear?<\/em> The bouch (bed-couch) is covered in these props, plus the tools\nof a kid\u2019s classroom, scissors, tape, glue. If you look around, you will find a\ncamouflaged Easter basket with a dwindling supply of chocolate eggs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though I have tried to gussy this post up with some\npsychological rendering of what a person\u2019s preferred room says about them, I wasn\u2019t\nable to do that. Well, not satisfyingly anyway. There were some analyses of what\nyour d\u00e9cor says, but I\u2019m pretty sure my d\u00e9cor says I\u2019d rather buy food than have\nsomething I can refer to as d\u00e9cor. I suppose it\u2019s all functional. We have space\nto do the things we need. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cat\u2019s the one who\u2019s got the whole place figured this out. In the morning she stands on the bedroom window sill and squints into the sun and then she does a morning nap on the kitchen counter where the sun beams in. In the afternoon she ends up under the covers in the living room. In the late afternoon she sits on the window sill in the living room, eating up the rays. At night she sleeps on the bathroom rug until she wakes up and decides to stand on my stomach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where do you dwell, reader, and why?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Morning work station. Pen. Notebook. Coffee. Cookies within reach. Check. I\u2019m in the kitchen writing. It\u2019s a rainy Sunday morning, I\u2019m sipping coffee and clicking away at the keyboard. From ground level, I hear a short growl and then I feel a paw on my thigh. That cat wants up. I lift my left arm […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4687,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/59379906_804382909941709_8987182297664978944_n.jpg?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1dA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4688,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4686\/revisions\/4688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}