Things You May Not Know About Living With An Octogenarian: the first in a series

with carpeting 

When was the last time you watched an 80-something-year-old walk? Okay. Now, when was the last time you listened to an 80-something-year-old walk? Hear that? Schrrrritch. Schrrrritch. Scrrritch. Scrrrritch. That's the sound of someone not picking up their feet.

It's a fact that our joints begin to stiffen and ache as we age. Those essential moving parts become a little less flexible. At the age of 60 I find that some mornings I bound (okay, slight exaggeration) out of bed, while other days I wake up a bit stiff and scrrritch-scrrrritch my way to the bathroom. My mom does a flat-footed shuffle pretty much all of the time. What this means is that she is essentially wiping her feet from  one end of my house to the other.

Carpeting is vile stuff, in my opinion. Expensive crap that forces consumers to spend even more money to keep it clean. I pulled up the carpeting myself in my first L.A. apartment. There was a layer of silt beneath it deep enough to grow radishes. I knew the carpeting in this place would have to go, and it was one of the first projects, but I left the carpet in my mom's room. I had it professionally shampooed, and it turned out pretty close to pristine. Carpeting would be warmer, I reasoned. The room would be cozier, and the surface softer. A couple months later two black tracks traced a path from doorway to bed, doorway to chair, and doorway to desk.

Yesterday, the man who loves me sent his crew up here from L.A. A long drive, a long day--and while the baseboard did not get installed, and couple of floor boards still need to be glued down, it's a vast improvement even in its unfinished state.

with the new wood floor