Why I hate having a guest room

It's anti-American, right? To have a bit more house than you need and find it annoying rather than desirable? Nevertheless, the guest room is beginning to piss me off.

When we first bought this house almost two years ago, the "upgrade" from three bedrooms to four seemed to make sense. Knowing that we wanted three kids meant that someday we'd have the option of giving them all their own rooms. Sister wanted to share a room with Bean then which meant that we wouldn't need this configuration right away, but someday the girls would want their own space. In the meantime, we had visions of hosting out-of-state friends in our fourth bedroom and we outfitted it accordingly. We bought a new mattress set to go on the bed frame that had once belonged to Husband's mother when she was growing up. We moved her entire suite of furniture from Atlanta to here--the bed frame, two large dressers, a night table, and a wall mirror. I added a quilt rack with vintage quilts, some toiletries that our imminent guests could use if they forgot theirs, a framed picture, some knick-knacks...

Who have we hosted in the almost two years in this house? Exactly three sets of guests. And one of them was one of my local college girlfriends here for a grown-up slumber party I hosted once when Husband was out of town.

What our guest room is really used for is storage of a lot of unnecessary shit. For example:
--a three-foot square box of unopened mail that is now two years old! I'm not exaggerating here! But Husband doesn't want to throw it away because there might (still!) be something important in there. The cats use the box as a scratching post, though. Perhaps that keeps them from using the sofa arms quite so much for the same purpose? Fucking cats. Fucking box.
--a turntable and two massively heavy boxes of record albums. Will we ever listen to them again? I know I won't listen to my portion of that ancient vinyl, not least because to do so would mean replacing the turntable's needle, lugging the thing downstairs, and routing it through our receiver somehow. Can we get rid of the turntable and the albums? Husband says no. He might want to listen to them someday.
--other electronic stuff. A couple of computers, a couple of old telephones, bundles of wires that belong to god-knows-what.
--a hideously ugly woven blanket that traveled with Husband from Guatemala that he wants to keep as a souvenir. Never mind that we never use it because it's entirely too scratchy to be comfortable and is suspiciously hairy. And did I say super ugly?
--a large plastic box of family memorabilia that doesn't belong to us, that we've been charged with looking through, scanning if we want, and mailing back to the cousin who loaned it to us. She sent it when Bean was born because it contained items belonging to Bean's namesake, the cousin's mother. That was almost three years ago and I'm guessing she'd want it back...oh, 2-1/2 years ago?
--a closet full of out-of-season vintage dresses. If I'm being fair here, I should admit that some of the stuff is mine. I keep telling myself that once my little kids are big, I can wear my gorgeous frocks again without risking spit-up, "washable" paint, and peanut butter destroying them. Maybe I should let this little dream go?

Humph. Maybe we can get rid of the other crap first and then we'll talk.

Pet peeve

Sister's school was cancelled this morning, which I found out at 6:10 am with a call from an automated phone operator. This particularly sucked because Sister is currently in Florida with my mother, living it up in Disneyworld, and I really didn't need to know this time.

We have what is termed a "wintry mix" outside in NC today. It started off with pretty snow around 7:30 or so and turned into some kind of sleety rain mix within a couple of hours. It's not currently warm enough to stick to the roads so I made it out earlier to Whole Foods for some things I didn't really need and a latte which I kinda did need. What I really needed, of course, was to set foot out of the house with Bean. I didn't relish the idea of being stuck in here with her for the whole day one little bit.

While shopping, I was once again subjected to the tired Yankee tirade against Southerners and snow, courtesy of the deli clerk who sliced my ham. Fer chrissakes, I've heard this rant a hundred times if I've heard it once. It goes like this: "You guys call THIS snow?! Back in Chicago/New York/Philadelphia, where I'm from, this would be nothing. They'd have the school buses running without even thinking twice! What is your problem down here anyway?"

Please, Yankees, just shut the hell up about this, will ya? We just don't get much snow here and therefore no one wants to waste their money on snow tires or chains or even a fleet of snowplows and tons of salt for the roads. I mean, why bother? It does something frozen here maybe once or twice a year if we're lucky, and it's usually ice, not snow, which nobody should be driving around in anyway, 4-wheel drive, snow tires, Yankee heritage or not.

So what if we cancel school when you would be bravely forging ahead in your school buses. Take a break, drink some hot chocolate with your out-of-school kids and find a new way to disparage the South, o.k.? God knows there's plenty of fodder if you want to rant.