The Curtain

I'm so loved that sometimes it's embarrassing.

When I moved in to my new place with Molyneaux in August, I took the smaller of the two rooms available. This was largely because at the last place we shared, I called dibs on the bigger room and he got stuck with the small one. So this time around, he got the big digs.

At first I was worried that not all of my furniture would fit into my new room. I had a big damn desk, a double bed, a small book shelf, and a decent-sized dresser to shove into my mauve-carpeted cube of a room.

For the first week I lived here I kept shifting my furniture around, but it never seemed quite right. It was like sleeping next to someone and trying to find the most comfortable place to put each arm; shifting about, trial and error-style, really struggling with it before getting truly comfortable. I tried a lot of stupid combos in search of the right setup. It was only after I tried putting my shelf unit on top of my desk that I realized that this was getting ridiculous.

I had tried to fit my dresser in my closet, but the closet doors totally buggered that idea all to hell. So I finally decided to bust out the tools and wreck shop. I took the doors off of my closet and nestled my dresser right in there. I was then free to shift the remaining furniture into their proper places and go on living comfortably.

The only small problem was the fact that my closet was now wide open.

Now, as you might have picked up on by now, displaying my wardrobe is not something I'm ashamed of. However, having nowhere to stow shit when company's coming over was a problem. I now had no rug under which to sweep the dust, so to speak.

So I asked my mom if she had any old shower curtains or something that I could use to shield visitors from the depths of my private space. (ew...) She offered to make something for me and asked for ideas for such an item. And as goofy as this sounds, I had been thinking of doing something with my old jeans. I suggested using my old trousers and other scraps she had to make a curtain and she agreed to work something out. She also said she might spell something like 'IUP' out with different fabric or put a big smiley face in the middle of it. I thought that might be neat, so I said 'whatever' and left it at that.

A few months later, while I was visiting the ol' homestead before volleyball, Mom said she had something for me. I thought it might be some mail they'd received by accident or some joke she'd printed off of the Internets. But no! It was nothing so mundane. She brought me into her sewing room, and there on the ground was The Curtain.



My initial reaction was surprise, because I had no idea that she'd been working on it all this time. The second reaction was that the pants thing looked pretty sweet. And finally I saw the other panels, which were made with so much love that I couldn't help but love those, too.

I'm totally cool with the scrap of Cowboys fabric she found from when she made some bandannas and boxers for Big Bro Mark and I back in the 90s. And the big ol' IUP patch sure does me proud. And even the glaring tribute to my first big-boy job is cool, even though it'll be a tad corny after I one day move on and get a new jorb, but I still dig it.

I love my momma, no doubt, and she put a lot of work into this and I love it. I just wanted to publicly thank The Tauz Mom for this heirloom that she has made for me. I also wanted to give The Tauz Blaug Faithfuls out there something else to mock me mercilessly for...



Now you can poke fun at me the next time you see me in person. I suggest you call me a Momma's Boy, but don't be surprised when I don't take that as an insult. It's just like telling me that my mommy loves me.

And where's the shame in that?