L IS FOR LOFT

     I've lived in my house for about 17 years.  For most of that time, the space above my garage consisted of some rotted-out wooden floorboards.  You could get up there via a rotted-out wooden ladder, if you were willing to risk it, but there wasn't much point to that because once you were up, wherever you set foot, there was a good chance of your crashing through the floor to the cement below.
     When my daughter was in middle school, my husband and I decided to hire a handyman to construct a real space up there, so that she and her friends could use it as a playroom.  He did a wonderful job, installing a sturdy floor, a window, insulation, electricity, and a staircase.  So of course, my daughter and her friends used the space maybe twice and then completely abandoned it.
     Meanwhile, at some point my daughter decided that one bedroom really wasn't enough to meet her very sophisticated needs, so she annexed the guest room.  This became her bedroom, and her bedroom became her closet.  The main problem with this was that the guest room, when not being used for guests, was supposed to be MY space, to be used specifically for writing.  Not that I actually used it very much, but still, at least it had been my theoretical space, and now it wasn't even that.
     It took a long time, but eventually I came up with the following thought: if she's going to take over my unused space, what's to stop me from taking over hers?  So I did.  Voila!  My writing nook:

 

 

 



     I adore my loft.  I truly do.  I decorated it with carpet scraps I cut up to form a patchwork, with bits of furniture donated from friends, and with pictorial references to every book I've written and some I haven't yet.  Maybe, if you've been following my A to Z posts, you'll have figured out that it's probably my adult version of a dollhouse.  Or maybe it's modeled after the Swiss Family Robinson's treehouse, another space I coveted as a child.  The key is that it's ALL MINE.
     There's only one slight problem.  I haven't spent any time in my beloved space in probably over a year.  After all the work I put into fixing up my nook, I do my writing at the kitchen table instead, right in the middle of whatever is going on around me.  Like daughter, like mother, I guess.  But it makes me so happy just to know my loft is there, waiting for me whenever I feel like visiting again...