I was “supposed” to be writing this post from my newly outfitted roof deck. We dragged a decrepit outdoor loveseat up there, stole the umbrella from our patio table and called it furnished. It had been furnished before but last weekend L tossed the even more decrepit furniture off the roof deck into the general direction of the dumpster. Except the dumpster was on the North side of the house and the furniture target zone was on the West side. I can tell you that close might count in horseshoes and hand grenades (and bocce, and multiple choice tests) but it does not count in the famous furniture heave. No matter. No cats were harmed in the de-accessing of the roof deck.
I don’t seem to have a synonym for roof deck.
Yesterday when I brushed the worst of the dead leaves off the of loveseat and sank into it I thought. “Tomorrow I will come up here to write.” I will post about the roof deck and then I will write a scene with a roof deck. Roof. Deck. Yet today I am not writing from the roof deck because I don’t want to climb the stairs. Lest you think the roof deck is true to its name and on the roof let me explain that it is on the roof of the first floor of the house. So more like an overhang deck. So it is only one flight of stairs that are the barrier between me and the roof deck.
If you have been to my house you might ask me: “Why the roof deck? You have that lawn and also that side porch and also that back patio.” It’s a good point, all of those outdoor areas have furniture that can’t yet be called decrepit and certainly aren’t heave-ready. “Well” I would tell you. “It’s because of all of the fun around me.” If we were having this conversation at your house or somewhere down the street participating the the 8am dog parade you might squinch your eyes together if you haven’t had Botox recently and ask. “What’s wrong with fun?” Or “Why are you avoiding fun?”
If you asked me at my house however I would use all of my strength to heave open the sometimes-broken-all-the-time-sticky glass slider to the back patio and you would HEAR the fun. The fun sounds like kids shrieking with pleasure. And if I were less like the 80 year old in charge of the HOA I would take pleasure in their pleasure. But I am not and so I don’t. There are zip lines and trampolines and other loud fun making things. There are concerts that are the parent version of fun. “What about school hours?” You wonder. 1. School hours are for apparently endless lawn work. 2. There are two dogs who stay in the yard having “fun” for most of the day. and 3. One family is giving a very good impression of their kids being homeschooled, if homeschooling is lawn schooling. Which it seems to be.
These neighbors are lovely. They recover my dog when he walks himself. They offer to lend us their generator. They chat with Steve about beer. They did all the legwork to set building a three household fence (sadly without soundproofing.) I have no complaints about them as humans. Just as humans who enjoy life.
I want to be outside without hearing any fun. My fun is quiet. Crossword puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles. Block puzzle on the phone (I dare you to download it and not waste an hour. My high score is a meager 4,123. Beat that.) Puzzles, it seems, don’t sound the same as real fun.
So I (and by “I” I mean Steve) set up the roof deck. Soon we (and by “we” I mean the kids) will sweep off last fall’s leaves (and by “soon” I mean before next fall) and I will spend some time up in the silence of the trees.(And by “I” I mean me.) Alone. Above the fun.
Yesterday was my dry run and I tucked my legs under me and settled into the outdoor loveseat and talked to the cats as the wove through and on top of wrought iron rails and beneath and on top of leaf piles and beside and on top of my lap. Then I heard a banging and a sliding and my daughter’s face was pressed up against her screen window which I had somehow failed to notice was directly behind my head on the loveseat. “You are being really loud out there. You should know that I can hear every thing you are saying.” I guess even my kind of fun can be too loud. But she can suck it up.
This post was going to have lots and lots of roof deck photos but I will have to use the single photo I took yesterday. This is Molly showing me that last falls leaves are still lots of fun. And only a little noisy.
Hilarious, Anna. I, too, live by a lot of fun (aka a high school). Boy, those kids are charming and do they have *manners*. It was even more fun when a church took space over the boxing gym and would earnestly play horribly out of tune Christian rock for hours. Bonus: I get the joyful sounds of tourists departing the beach, thinking their taste in music should be shoved in everyone else's face on their way home. No one respects the fun of quiet these days. xo