Empty house

"A house is not a home," as the song goes.  Dionne Warwick may have been singing about the absence of love, but her observation applies as well to the absence of furniture.

I'm typing this post hunched uncomfortably over a PC monitor and keyboard that are balanced on my piano bench.  Pretty much everything else on the ground floor is gone.  The slightest noise echoes throughout the house. 

 My floors were to be refinished beginning yesterday. Because of the fumes, my feline friends and I had to be out of the house by Sunday, and not return until Friday morning.  The piano was hauled away for storage on Friday.  Twenty-one bookcases and their books were dismantled and moved to the basement.  All the furniture was moved to either the basement or under a tarp on the back deck.

At the last moment, the contractor delayed the work until tomorrow. So my living arrangements had to be changed, and I don't move out until tonight, returning Saturday morning.  (Somehow, the contractor decided at the same time that he could do the whole job in one day less.)  I've had two days of hanging out in what is, in effect, an empty house.  The cats recoil in horror from its tomb-like ambience, and spend their time either outdoors or in the relative comfort of the still-furnished and carpeted upstairs.  They dash through the deserted downstairs as swiftly as possible, claws skidding on the bare floors as they move from one environment to the other.

I'll just be glad to have it all over by Saturday.  I realize now the degree to which furniture -- however decrepit and cat-scarred -- and art actually do make a house a "home."

Forget Dionne's lament of "no one there you can kiss goodnight" -- I'll be content with chairs, sofas, carpets, stereo playing in the background, and a good book on my lap.