DATE: Friday, June 13, 1997                 TAG: 9706120217

SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON   PAGE: 08   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: OVER EASY 

                                            LENGTH:   63 lines

EVEN AS ``EMPTY NEST'' HOUSE IS ALWAYS FULL

Our house, which we bought more than 22 years ago, has six bedrooms, three baths and four doors. The size was not excessive when we had three teen-age sons living under the same roof. I kept a running total one week and found that they spent a combined total of nine hours and 58 minutes each day locked in the bathrooms. They also got into fights every time they came within four rooms of each other.

Eventually the kids left home and we began to think about down-sizing.

But not for very long. In the 12 years since our youngest picked up his diploma at the University of Virginia and pointed his Pinto toward graduate school, we have managed to fill every room.

Two bedrooms have been turned into guest rooms, one into a sewing room, one into an office and one into a storage bin for Brady Bunch posters, lava lamps, eight track tape players and Kempsville High School yearbooks. That leaves one for Bill, Charlie the Lhasa and me.

After years of jockeying for space in the master bath, Bill and I now have the luxury of separate bathrooms. Chalk one up for the empty nest syndrome.

We justify the third bathroom's existence based on the fact that the kids come home on a regular basis and still spend hours behind locked doors reading heaven knows what and staring in the mirror. Why they still need to stare, I have no idea. None has had a zit in a decade and all three have considerably less hair to comb now than they did 20 years ago.

That brings us to the doors, something for which I've never found any justification. Four are about two too many, no matter how you look at it. That's four locks to check every time you go out, four places to track mud in and four openings for drafts to sneak through.

Then the resident wildlife took over and all that changed. First Charlie the Lhasa staked out the top step of the side door. He now spends hours there watching the street, guarding the house and sniffing the aromas from fast food places to the south.

Stepping out there without looking can be dangerous. I have teeth marks on my ankle to prove it. I should have known better than to put my foot smack dab in the middle of a snoozing Lhasa. Anyway, with the fuzzball commandeering the side step, the number of usable doors was cut to three.

Then Sidney the demented robin took over the back door. He bats his head on the glass, clings to the screen and poops on the deck. Dare to step out that door and you get worse than a snarl and a nip. Strike another door.

That left us with two until last Friday. That's when I stepped out the front door and walked face first into a giant spider web. A temporary inconvenience, I figured. I got a broom, knocked the web down, ran a dozen assorted spiders out and assumed we still had a couple of safe exits.

Wrong.

The next day not only were the spiders back (web and all), but so were a pair of small red-headed birds. The two were shrieking wildly as they dragged yard debris into a hanging basket less than three feet from the door. Just what this place needs, another nesting pair.

I shut the door and took count. We now have one door for the furball with an attitude, one for the demented robin and his unruly clan and one to be shared by spiders and a family of something that I haven't yet had time to identify.

That leaves one for Bill, me and our guests. I guess maybe we should plan on staying where we are although I'm still not sure why we're paying upkeep and taxes on all the extra space. But since we are, I wonder if we have this place declared a wildlife sanctuary. That way we should at least be able to get a tax break somewhere.

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