Mary's Rochester House

We woke up Saturday morning just outside the Rochester City limit at the Hampton Inn, and did a vegan forage through the Inn's complimentary breakfast buffet. A vegan forage under such circumstances is a challenge, but not impossible. It is remarkable how much food such an attractive spread offers, one full of sugar, bleached flour, and animal protein. No wonder we Americans just can't resist. Even the oatmeal came in packets with heavily sugared flavoring of one sort or another. I settled, on the other hand, for some Cheerios, with a little moo juice, and a banana, plus a slice of whole wheat toast with a thin peanut butter spread. (Get off this; tell us about Rochester.)

Over to Mary's house we repaired, the truck just squeezing into the driveway that runs around back to an old, wooden two car garage, where Mary will keep her car. There were three big items of concern for me, as, for some strange reason, her two young male friends from Bryn Mawr did not follow us up. As I mentioned, Mary's apartment is on the second floor, up a flight of stairs that take an abrupt 90 degree right turn at a tiny landing before continuing up to Mary's level. The stairs are just wide enough to accommodate comfortably people going up single-file, even six-feet and taller people if they watch their heads. But we had a sofa, a chest of drawers with bookcase (from the boys' room at home), and a nice old dresser that Mary had bought at a second-hand furniture store at Bryn Mawr and painted. We saved those items for last, and we got them up with surprising ease. It's helpful to marry and produce strong women.

Mary's apartment is fun. You step off the stairs onto a small hallway. Immediately to the left is the kitchen, which is big for such a small apartment. It's at the SE corner of her house (which faces north). The kitchen has two windows, one on the south side and one on the east, so there is plenty of light during the day. It is large enough that it could handle a very small table, and whoever lived there before must have had one there, as there is a sort of chandilier hanging down from the center of the ceiling. A generous amount of cabinets line the north and east walls above a goodly spread of counter space. The oven is a gas one, which I understand good cooks like. Mary and her mom are great cooks.

Back at the top of the stairs, if we take almost a u-turn to the right, we see a narrow door. This leads to Narnia. No, wait, to somewhere even better: through that door and to the right, up more narrow stars we find an attic, clean and well lighted, having more windows facing west. Here, as we unpack below, we stow empty boxes, suitcases and so forth. In the distant past, the attic must have been another bedroom, for, oddly, there is a second door at the foot of the attic stairs, but this one takes you into the bath room, which makes sense if one occupies the attic bedroom and does not want to enter the the hallway at Mary's level.

You come into the bathroom at Mary's level by taking a quick right at the top of the regular stairs. It's a good size too, and appears to have been renovated some over the last few years: it has one of those plastic bathtub/shower modules, which is fine, although the built-in soap shelves and towel bars are upside down, as Carol noticed. (That one we have not yet figured out, unless somehow the space requirements required the workmen to install the panels that way.) There is an odd sized cabinet at the foot of the tub module, which is very deep and actually pretty functional. The medicine cabinet works well too.

Back in the hallway at the top of the stairs, instead of taking a hard right to the bathroom, a less hard right takes you into the living room. This room is also very well lighted, with three front windows, side by side, that face north toward the hospital complex, and on the west side, a single window. The room is somewhat narrow, but not uncomfortably so, and has at the SW end a narrow door to a serviceable closet that runs behind half of the south wall of the living room. We put the sofa along that wall, and you can sit there, look out those front windows, and see the lush trees on the median of Mary's street and still more trees that line the north side of the street, along the south side of the hospital complex. At the east end of the living room we set up Mary's dining room table, and at the west end by the west window, the chest and book case from the boys' room. Along the north side, will go Mary's Ikea chair, and a stuffed chair that was already in the apartment. The living room works well too.

Back out to the little hall-way, we walk straight to the end (it doesn't take long) and turn to the left, into Mary's bed room. It's on the SW corner of the second floor, and so it is well lighted too. Her new bed, her new chest, and her new desk, just fit, and there is an adequate closet too, adequate because there is an attic and other closets elsewhere.

I think Mary will be very comfortable in her new house in Rochester.