BEDROOMS

Amber and Delirious have been talking about their bedrooms, so I decided to join in the fun.

In the Omaha house, I have a very early memory of having the bedroom that later on belonged to my two brothers. I can't remember who I shared that room with - not sure if it was Twist or Inklings. I do remember we had the bunkbeds in there. We also had Inkling's bookshelf. I don't know if it was hers or became hers later. We didn't have any books in it, but it was the greatest Barbie house I ever had. It was a big deep bookcase with 2 shelves. I thought it was the coolest 2-story Barbie house. Of course we used the top of the bookcase (it was a long, wide, low bookcase) for the Barbies' rooftop patio. This bookcase was big enough to accomodate the Barbie canopy beds we made out of shoeboxes, with peg clothespins to hold up the half of an Oatmeal box that we used as the canopy - covered in fabric, of course. I think those beds were about the only real constructed furniture we had, and the rest was just whatever item, box, bottle, etc we could find around the house to assume the identity of the item of furniture we needed. From this bedroom, you could open the window, take out the screen and get on the slanted part of the roof and walk up to the flat top roof. Just don't let Mom catch you doing it. :0)

The next bedroom I remember having was when I shared the Master Bedroom suite with my sister. It was really like 2 rooms in one, and was actually a master bedroom with a nursery. To get to my room you had to go through hers, but there was no door or wall between her room and mine. I had a small closet in my room, but she got to use the coveted Cedar Closet, which was just outside her bedroom door. You could actually go into the closet and get dressed, because it was really like a tiny room - cedar lined. It smelled so good in there. Half the room had a closet rod on it with Mom and Dad's old or out of season clothes. The other half of the closet was my sister's. I inherited my Grandmother (dad's mom) chest of drawers, and vanity table and bench. My bedspread (handmade by Mom) was white with red roses and Mom had covered the vanity bench in the same fabric. The chest of drawers was quite tall, with a box on the top that had a hinged lid. If you lifted the lid, the inside was lined with either ribbed corduroy or velvet (not sure which). When my grandmother lived with us as an invalid, this is where she kept her medication. Even years later, it still had that medicine smell. The vanity was similiar to the one in the photo, except it was dark brown, with carvings, carved legs, more oval and singular mirror in the middle. When we moved to Texas my mom refused to bring them, thinking it was "junk". I was heart-broken. Later she realized what a great antique those were. I remember that the twin headboard I had, had once belonged to Inklings. It was wood and had carvings on it that, if I remember right, were something like nuts or acorns and oak leaves.

The last bedroom of that house that I had was the downstairs master. I call it the downstairs master, because it is the one Mom and Dad used when Inklings and I were upstairs in that master. When I was in the downstairs master, I shared the room with Delirious. We had twin beds that had bookcase headboards. These later went to Twist and Sticks. We had yellow bedspreads and yellow curtains. This was at a time when Mom was redecorating, and we got to pick what color we wanted our bedrooms. I don't think Delirious got to pick, but I did. :0) I think this is where I developed a love for the color yellow (I've had 2 yellow houses). We had wood floors all through that house, but Mom and Dad decided to get carpet. It wasn't like real carpeting, because we didn't have a pad, but Dad had found a place to get room-size carpets - they didn't go quite all the way to the wall. Of course, I think our carpet was yellow, or maybe gold. This bedroom had a big, long narrow closet in it.

The last bedroom I had was in the Texas house. Originally, when we were first told that we were moving to that house, Inklings and I got to pick our bedrooms, but then as time got closer for us to move, Mom changed her mind and picked them for us so she could put the boys in one room with their own bathroom. I got "put" in the room that later became the office. It had 2 built-in bookshelves with either shelves or drawers under them. It also had paneling half-way up the wall. Originally, this was going to be the "Pool Room", until AFTER Dad bought the pool table and got it in the room, he found out that you actually couldn't play pool in that room, because there wasn't room enough for the cue sticks. So the pool table was moved out to the garage and I got the room. Mom decided one day that she was going to make me a bedspread. Funny, how I never worried about not having one, but I guess she did. I was always perfectly happy with a quilt on my bed. Anyway, she brought home some material one day and showed it to me. I can't remember if she showed it to me before she made it into the bedspread, or somewhere along the way, but she had envisioned it to be a shiny taupe. Gag me. Well, the other side of the material was a nice dark brown that had some texture in it. I opted for that side, so much to my mother's dismay, she made it that way. I loved it. I inherited the old hanging lamp to put in the corner of my room. It was a cylindar shaped - are you ready? - orange, white and turquoise striped and was hung with a brass chain. I thought I had a pretty cool room, but I didn't have a nightstand. A few trips to the Arrowhead drive-in, and I "collected" enough car-hop trays to stack up for my nightstand to hold my yellow (yes) phone. When I got married and moved out, my dad took the car-hop trays back to the Arrowhead and returned them, appologizing for the light-fingeredness of his evil daughter.