Phantom Limbs

This is not a drinking fountain:

But it used to be. I'm staying at my parents' house for a few days and since I was last here for Christmas they have done some major renovations to the kitchen/family room area. I think the changes are all great and the place looks fantastic, but over the course of the day I have made dozens of trips over to this spot to take a drink from the drinking fountain before remembering that it's gone.*

There are no hanging cupboards above this counter:

But there used to be. This morning for breakfast I blindly reached up to grab a bowl out of the overhead cupboard, only to grasp futilely at the air. I laughed at my folly, and then at lunchtime I did it again.

There is no carpet walkway leading into the kitchen:

But there used to be. This is perhaps the weirdest change of all. The entryway used to be paved with some old brick-like tiles and then a trail of carpet led to the kitchen, but my parents replaced the whole area with this nice, new tile. However, each time I round that corner my brain expects the texture under my feet to become soft carpet, and it's a small shock when it stays cold and hard.

It's hard to undo 29 years of conditioning in just one day.

*I know what some of you are thinking: You had a drinking fountain in your house? The answer is no - we had two drinking fountains in the house: the aforementioned one in the family room and one downstairs (still extant). Domestic drinking fountains were not uncommon in houses in our neighborhood that were built around the same time as ours. It was one of my favorite things about the house and I was really sad to see it go, although it had been so heavily used for decades that it had gotten a little lime-encrusted.