Around the House,  Marriage Confessions

Funny Things Happen in Our Basement

January 7, 2010 /

When I first had Bean, we decided to move our office from the basement up to our living room so that I could continue blogging but not be so separate from the rest of the family.  We put a cute little desk in the living room and proceeded to drown the desk with hard drives, cables and cords, random pieces of mail, and pens.  Lots and lots of pens.

Last week when I decided that I needed to take some more time for myself, I talked Chris into moving the desk back down to the office in the basement.  Now, after Bean goes to bed, I can come down here and spend a couple hours by myself, writing and answering emails and listening to music and doing whatever it is that I want to do.

But funny things happen in our basement.

The minute we fixed it back up as a functioning space for me to have some private time, the entire family decided that the basement was where we should hang out.  And I have to say, its kind of nice having them down here.

Have you seen my basement?

On one side is the office, which I’ll take you on a tour of another day.  On the other side, separated by the stairs going up into our kitchen, is this little TV area.  Chris uses it for his Playstation room. You’ll also notice behind the couch hanging on the wall is Chris’ shot glass collection from college.  When we got married, I wanted to throw that thing out but he insisted that it stay in the house somewhere.  So we compromised and I put it in the darkest, most remote corner of our basement.  And everyone was happy.

Tonight when I was down here in the basement working on the computer, Chris, Bean, Lucy, and Molly all decided that it was a good time for them to explore the basement, too.  After a few minutes of poking around, Chris asked me to come over so he could show me something.

Chris is a music person.  Always has been.  And a couple years ago, he found a record player on E-Bay and ever since then he has been collecting albums.  Some vintage, some classic, some recent.  And every few weeks, he’ll spend an evening down in our basement by himself, drinking a beer, and listening to some album.  Happy as a clam.

But when we went home to Florida for Christmas, Chris got the best records yet.  He went through his dad’s collection of records from when Chris was growing up and pulled out the ones that he could remember listening to as a child.  So tonight, he played them for me and Bean.

Most of them were children’s music and Chris would tell me about how his dad used to put the music on a song for about 2 seconds and then Chris and his sister had to guess which song it was.

His favorite album when he was little was a Disney album with all of the original recordings of Disney movies.  Chris played little pieces of each song, telling me and Bean which were his favorites and which he could never guess when he was little.

And then after we made it through all the Disney songs, he put on some disco music from the 70s that he took from his dad’s house.  We all sang along to the disco version of Over the Rainbow.  Classic.

And then Lucy barked at us from upstairs and told us to shut up because Jeopardy was coming on.

It was such an impromptu night.  I don’t really know what else we should have been doing, but whatever it was it wasn’t dancing to Disney and disco music in our basement.  But I think that made it even more fun.

And it was great to spend time with Bean doing things that were very un-baby.  He hung in there like a champ.  Just chewing on the Playstation controller.

And then he answered some emails on his laptop.

But mostly, he just hung out with us.  Listening to Chris talk.  Listening to us sing.  Watching Chris dance.

It was great for both me and Bean to hear Chris talk about his family and growing up and some of his earliest memories as a child.  I think that’s an important part of family – remembering where you came from and then sharing that with a whole new generation.

Next week, I plan to tell Bean all about how when I was growing up in Florida and was knee high to a grasshopper, I had to walk uphill to school.  Both ways.  In the snow.  With no shoes.  And no cell phone.

When I can’t think of any good memories, I like to make mine up.

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14 Comments

  • Sandy

    January 7, 2010 at 10:23 pm Reply

    That last part elicited a fond memory for me…no matter how bad someone would say they had it walking to school, my dad would always throw in that he had to fight the indians…still makes me laugh after all these years!

  • Haley

    January 8, 2010 at 12:49 pm Reply

    I too look forward to having kids and telling them about my childhood memories back “when the air was clean and sex was dirty.”
    In all seriousness, my fondest memories growing up was when my parents told stories of when they were kids and when we’d jam to a little CCR and Johnny Horton.
    Bean will love these moments!

  • Meryn

    January 8, 2010 at 3:29 pm Reply

    Katie, this is the sweetest post. I can only imagine what it’s like to have a child and a house, but when you talk about Chris, family, the dogs… You always nail it. This post makes me want to hug Joel for as long as he can stand it (it’s usually a while 🙂

    And you have a sweet basement. More parties down there, please. Oh, wait, I live in Wisconsin now… Darn. Have your basement fun without us then…

  • alison

    January 8, 2010 at 5:44 pm Reply

    I just love your posts Katie! I especially love the picture of Lucy at the top of the stairs.. “hey who’s making all that racket?” LOL! Reminds me of my dacshund Molly..

  • Jen

    January 8, 2010 at 8:33 pm Reply

    I love nights like that! When you just sort of hang out and wind up having a great time. And you just reminded me of the records I used to listen to when I was little – they were my mom’s, and she had a ton of Disney stuff. I wonder what happened to them…

  • Nate's Mom

    January 9, 2010 at 6:53 am Reply

    Oh dear, Katie! I have to hide blog posts like that from my husband. If he saw that Chris had his own Playstation area with a flat screen teevee, I’d get endless hints all day and night. “Hey, Ann, did you see what Chris has? Mighty nice!” 🙂 Glad to see that Bean has his own laptop to work on – Nate likes to take control of mine…and the remote control. He likes to change channels and accidentally (or purposefully?) record things on the DVR….

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