Living Large in a Small Space: Six Peas in a Pod (truly Living Large in a Small Space)

Last night Cameron put the size of our apartment to the test. She had two friends sleep over. Remember our apartment is 600 sq. ft. and Jeff, Jordan, and I were home as well. Cameron actually had two friends sleep over on Wednesday night, but Jordan and I were out late at a comedy club and Jeff basically spent the evening at his desk in his office/our bedroom, so the girls had the run of the house. This was an exercise in sharing the space.

I made dinner, which in itself is a battle with the ventilation and heating in our apartment. There is no ventilation except for opening the kitchen window to let air in. Using the stove along with running water and the heat of the sputtering, hissing radiator make the apartment a steam bath. All of this in conjunction with six bodies in a confined space was a sweaty mess. Luckily the window air conditioner in the living room is still in place, so we cranked it up to try to cool and dehumidify. My baked ziti was a delicious success. I had Cam and her friends help themselves first and they took their plates to the living room to eat and resume watching Christmas specials on TV. Jeff, Jordan and I followed. I took my plate back to Cameron’s room and sat at the desk that I work at during the day, Jordan climbed on Cam’s twin bed with her plate, and Jeff followed suit. This in itself was a comical sight. Within 10 minutes the three girls were in the bedroom with us discussing what movie they were planning on going to see that evening. Please stop and visualize this. Jeff, Jordan and I are eating at Cam’s desk and on her bed and three 13 year old girls are chatting with us as if it was normal for us to be eating squeezed into a tiny bedroom. I can only chalk up the fact that they were unphased by the scene to the fact that these New York City kids have seen bigger and smaller apartments and they take it all in-stride. But after they left the room Jeff and I looked at each other and broke out laughing at the absurdity of the scene.

One thing that a New Yorker’s will argue is that you don’t’ need a large apartment because you are so rarely home. So when Cam asked if she could have her friends sleep over I told her that they could spend the night if they got out of the house for part of the evening. They did walk down to Lincoln Center and saw “Hugo” at the AMC and walked home via 16 Handles Frozen Yogurt. Seven months ago if someone would have told me that I would let Cameron out alone on a Saturday night gallivanting all over the Upper West with her friends I would never have never believed you.

Jordan and I baked cookies to add the homey feel to the apartment, but again, the humidity and heat were high when the girls got back to the apartment. Since my bedroom is a loft bed with Jeff’s office and a closet underneath, the living room is really the only place to relax. So Jordan and I easily took up the living room space watching television while Jeff was working on his music under the loft The girls bounded between Cam’s bedroom, the living room, and stealing cookie dough out of the kitchen. Let me preface this whole story by saying Carlota and Danielle are absolutely lovely. Carlotta’s family is from Spain and Danielle’s family is from China, so Cameron being from the far away land of Colorado makes for an obvious friendship, and both of them are very warm and charismatic (parents of 13 year olds will understand that that is not always the case). At one point they took pillows and blankets onto the fire escape until the winter chill sent them back inside, and although we baked chocolate chip cookies they took a midnight run around the corner to Insomniac Cookies for the oatmeal raisin variety.

The mornings are actually the tightest squeeze. We have a wonderful fold out couch, but once it is unfolded it "is" the living room. The girls took their sweet time crawling out of bed so I had to squeeze around the bed to make my way to the kitchen to make coffee. The girls turned on VH1 Top 20 and I nestled on the foot of the fold out couch to enjoy my coffee and watch TV, but poor Jeff was religated to the bedroom., while Jordan was in the kitchen making pancakes. When Jordan was serving up breakfast to the girls Jeff and I scrambled like elves to put the bed away as fast as we could so that when the girls returned to the room, it was restored to a space capable of walking through.

My twenty year old son, Hunter, gets here next weekend. I have a feeling one big 20 year old testosterone driven body is going to dwarf our two little visitors this weekend. But for now, Cam is encouraged to invite friends over as long as they have a good sense of New York City apartment space.