Lofty Expectations

I live in a glorified closet.

Just enough room exists in the kitchen for me to turn around. My oven isn’t big enough for a Papa Murphy’s pizza. I have to stand in the bathtub to close the bathroom door. Well, not quite. But very nearly. There’s not much room in my studio apartment.

But I do have a loft.

This loft is rather makeshift. It very obviously was not a part of the original plan for the apartment. The underside isn’t painted, the ladder tips in instead of out. The particle-board floor creaks and shifts.

But this is where I sleep.

The first two nights I lied awake, praying I wouldn’t fall through. I kept picturing the whole structure caving in. I saw myself impaled on the television that sits directly below the head of my bed. Yes, I know the definition of “impaled.” Yes, I realize it’s not exactly feasible to be impaled on a television. But at three in the morning, sleep-deprived in a scary new city, it seemed more than possible. It seemed certain. I was going to die.

Obviously I didn’t. The fear passed. Or maybe I was just too tired to care anymore. But the possibility of falling through wasn’t the only problem, I discovered. Painfully. Discovered painfully.

I can’t sit up straight in bed.

Now, I knew this, of course. It was evident from the moment I hoisted my extra-deep mattress onto the rickety platform. Not bringing the box spring had been a very wise decision. But I digress.

My cell phone--my stand-in alarm clock--resides at the foot of my bed while I sleep, plugged into the three-outlet extension cord that also powers my reading lamp. At 7 a.m. on the third morning in the loft, the cheerfully loud digital symphony rang out. And I hit my head on the ceiling. In my hazed and harried rush to silence that horribly happy noise I forgot about the low clearance. I’d like to say I learned my lesson after this first incident. But I would be lying.

Possible concussions and television-impalement aside, having a loft is, well, fun. When I was little, I wanted bunk beds in the worst way. The idea of sleeping on the top bunk always held some sort of magical appeal. Sleeping in my loft is even better, though. Firstly, it cuts out the superfluous bottom bunk. Secondly, I’m an adult. All right, this statement has been disputed on occasion. But chronologically, it’s fact. Being an adult and sleeping in what might be described as a tree-fort-minus-the-tree is unconventional. And speaking as someone whose adulthood has been disputed, unconventional is good. No, unconventional is great. In fact, my loft might be the greatest thing since Papa Murphy’s Veggie deLITE pizza.

Which I can’t cook in my tiny oven.

I suppose there had to be a trade-off somewhere.