Okay, as promised back at the end of December…
When we moved to Klamath Falls, it had three bedrooms like in Aiken, so in both places two of the bedrooms were made up as bedrooms, and the third became the “Computer Room.” The computer room was merely where the desktop PC was, and it also held the futon so it could be used as a third bedroom just in case.
In Aiken there was a bedroom with an en-suite bathroom, and even though it was a small bath, we liked to use it, but there was a large skylight over the bed. Even with a set of blinds on it, it would still get very warm in the summer, so it became our winter bedroom, and the one on the other side of the house, without a skylight, became our summer bedroom. Every 6 months or so we would schlep our clothing from one closet to the other. And because we had one newer mattress that we liked better than the other, we would also drag it back and forth. After a bunch of years, we finally bought a second nice mattress, so they only had to exchange just closet items.
The K-Falls house was two stories with 2 bedrooms up and one down. The upstairs was really the main floor, as it had the kitchen and dining rooms, so most of our time was spent up there. Again, one of the bedrooms upstairs had an en suite, so it naturally became our primary bedroom. The second bedroom upstairs was kind of small, so it was turned into the Computer Room with a futon. The downstairs had the two-car garage and a large family room, along with a full-size bedroom and a bathroom/laundry room. Even though the upstairs bedroom we used didn’t get hot in the summer, we decided that we should continue the seasonal rotation of sleeping quarters; otherwise, we would never use the downstairs area except for laundry and getting in the cars.
That first summer we lived in Klamath Falls, we moved downstairs, but we didn’t swap closets full of clothes because the closet downstairs was too small to hold both our wardrobes. We still showered upstairs because the one downstairs was just a small stand-up one, so what we did was shower and go downstairs to the family room to watch a little TV before going to bed. Actually, the TV downstairs was larger than the one upstairs in the living room because above the fireplace the mantle was fairly high up on the wall.
The 2nd or 3rd night we were in the downstairs bedroom, we were startled awake about 2:00 AM by an extremely loud BOOM. I’d have sworn someone fired a shotgun in the room. I jumped out of bed and turned on the light; the bedroom looked normal, and the window was intact. So I started flicking on lights and checking the rooms downstairs. The family room was fine; nothing was out of place. I checked the water heater that sits next to the washer and dryer; no leaks or cracks, so it didn’t explode. Next was the garage, and both cars were sitting cool and quiet. Up the stairs I went. No broken windows with meteorites smoking on the floor anywhere. I looked in every room, and nothing had fallen off the walls, and looking out the windows, there were no cars smashed into telephone poles. Lastly, I walked outside on the front porch and back decks, and there were no neighboring homes on fire or police activity.
I was very puzzled that the sound was extremely loud, like it was in the same room as us, but nothing was amiss there, nor any other place in the house. The mystery was solved a few days later when I vacuumed the bedroom. The downstairs was built into a hillside, so it actually served as the foundation. Because the floor was concrete under the luxury vinyl plank, when one of the three slats supporting the box spring shifted and popped down, it made a loud boom. 1