Friday, July 25, 2008

Work Space

Since we moved into the much larger new house I have surprisingly had difficulty finding room to work. Our new home is twice the size of our old one and yet there is little room for my laptop and books. In fact my books were stored in the garage since moving which displeased me a great deal. As for my laptop, it and I have been refugees from place after place. We have begun to feel like gypsies without a home to lay our heads.

At first I had my computer on the sole desk in the house since we left my computer desk for refuse when we moved. As displeasing as this was to me, I was patient because I knew that eventually I would land a much better place to work than I was accustomed to. My wife however placed her laptop there also and so displaced mine. She uses her's, which is much better than mine, for shopping on E-Bay and checking email, two highly important functions, and that is about it. (That is a whole separate issue). So I then moved my computer and I to our dining room table. We actually have a legitimate dining room now, but with three kids mostly eat in the kitchen so I figured we were safe there.

I was wrong. When my wife hosted a scrapbooking party I was asked to move my things. I acquiesced because I thought that it was a temporary move. After all the former kitchen table is now upstairs in the loft, and was being used for scapbooking. After a few days however it became clear that the dining room table was now the permanent place for her scrapbooking things, of which there is much.

The odd thing is that the upstairs table remained a place for scrapbooking as well. I was left to sitting on the couch in the living room with my computer on my lap to work. Not ideal in my mind.

One day in frustration I moved to the kitchen table though I knew that such a move would put me directly in the path of inconvenience. Now I was taking up a third of that table, but was getting some work done as was satisfied as to the arrangement.

It did not take long however for my things to come in conflict with the function of our household. My wife was searching for something on the table and in frustration tossing my things around when I finally blew.

I took a stand and decided that I would not be displaced any longer. I laid out my complaints and reviewed the history of my sojourn, and my wife gave in and cleared off a quarter of the dining room table for me to work.

I was a bit disappointed because I thought that I deserved at least half of that table since she now had a table and three fourths to my one fourth, but it was a start, and I was still optimistic that my workspace blues would be alleviated soon. As it was we had commissioned a man to build us a wall length workspace including bookshelves and cabinets. I yearned for it as a man yearning for a home.

I fumed a few more times as I sat down to work only to find scrapbooking paper on my computer or pictures covering my books, but I help my tongue. Many of my things had fallen to the floor and yet somehow I drove on. In all of that chaos I managed to create wonderful lessons for the approaching school year and managed a little writing.

At last Woody (that is the carpenter’s name) brought over our finished cabinets and assembled them in our loft. Home at last! Now I have a great workspace from which I am currently writing. My beloved books are above me on shelves. My tools (stapler, holepuncher, pencil sharpener) are all here. I am in heaven. As of yet very few scrapbooking materials have found there way onto the desk, and I aim to keep it that way. Now I have little excuse for not writing. I guess I will have to take responsibility for my own failure. Hmmmm... maybe I should have been happy being homeless.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure if you'll ever read this but I hope you get around to writing! The Sureshot was great. I just noticed it in my parents bookcase (I had no idea they owned it!), sat down and read it and was impressed. i really wanted to hear more about Durbar's future though. Besides that little upset, I love how descriptive you were but didn't dwell on the less important things. It was amazing and the setting was wonderful!! I hope to hear about new books soon enough! Congrats on the three kids btw!

A daughter of some old friends,

Delia

Anonymous said...

P.S. Naturally I'll be back periodically.

-Delia

Phil said...

Delia, please email me so I can catch up with you and your parents. We miss you all and hope you are doing well.