Flex space…

I need sheer white curtains for the space.

I got a consolation prize when Sam moved out; his bedroom and closet. I knew exactly what I wanted to accomplish; it was just a matter of doing it. After Monday’s downstairs cleaning project, I worked on the new upstairs flex space.

Flex space is one of those new words to me in the last ten years. People have used rooms for multi-purposes for decades; now, it has a designer name. Our flex space would become half guest room and half music room.

Not everyone has a huge poster of themselves that hung in the kiosk of Bennington’s Four Corners a few years ago for a fundraising show we were hosting. I never thought I’d have an appropriate space to hang it up.

I’ve had my electronic drum kit packed away for about six years. I had a friend who was my drum teacher, but that was a bad idea. Period. I found I could naturally follow rock songs I knew by heart, but I still had a lot of work to play correctly and build up the muscle in my right base drum leg.

Marty’s dad’s piano and my other drums and tambourine.

We also brought up Marty’s dad’s piano, another instrument I want to learn to play. I have my middle eastern drums and a cajon, a drum you sit on. I don’t know how to play the cajon, but I want to learn. Marty has a guitar he wants to learn to play.

Never having a place to set up a music space stopped us from playing and learning; now, there are no excuses. I also want to learn to speak French; there is no excuse for that except laziness.

Like many others, covid taught me to start doing the things I still wanted to do and places to travel to. This is my chance to start learning. I won’t tackle everything at once, but I will start with the drums and how to speak French.

The guest bedroom half of the room came together in a snap. The large armoire now houses all the linens for the bedrooms and bath. I’ve never had a centralized space that will make changing linens easier than hunting around for matching duvets and sheet sets.

As for Sam’s closet, I finally have a closet dedicated to my belly dance costuming, which is a lot after 20 years. I can now see and touch everything easily and not have to go through oversized totes shoved into my closet. This is a total luxury to me, and I love it!

This closet has a lot, including 9 totes, a shelving unit, cubbies, and suitcases tucked under everything on the floor. How the fuck I fit it all in my closet is beyond me.

I also got around to filling my new old armoire my friend Marcia gave me before she moved back to France. It was her childhood furniture growing up in Paris. It fit perfectly in our bedroom, but I was unsure what to fill it with and had no time to figure it out.

I filled it with all of my favorite things! It’s a magical armoire to me now displaying my favorite books and items that mean a lot to me. All the other junk I had I got rid of. All my treasures in one place and perfect use of the Parisian piece.

I worked hard after production for two days, about 15 hours worth of decluttering, cleaning, and organizing. Marty helped me with the new flex space yesterday. We set up my drum kit, and I sat down, trying to remember what I had learned.

New linen armoire and tv to learn on! Yay!

Sam’s room has a TV he left behind, which I can watch on YouTube. I found plenty of drumming for beginners’ videos and can easily see the tv from the drum kit. I started watching an instructional video with a young woman as the teacher. I like the way she taught and will probably use her.

That’s what I’ve been up to; I haven’t cooked a real meal since Christmas. Marty has been working out in his workshop, so we have found easy to prepare foods to eat in between projects.

We will be in production tomorrow and make a couple of deliveries, then that’s it. We are taking Saturday off from the market and will enjoy our holiday weekend. We don’t have any concrete plans yet, but I am sure we will hang out with friends and celebrate the upcoming new year.