MissMeliss: Escribition

It’s no secret that I’ve been having an issue with my office. When we first moved here, and I was still doing loans, the calming tranquility of walls the color of green tea appealed to me. I had lots of power outlets for my nifty business machines. It was good.

But over the last couple years, really since quitting BigFinancialCompany, I’ve not been able to find the ‘zone’ in my office. It’s not that I dislike the colors, or anything, I’m just not at home there. This is demonstrated that the beautiful calendar my mother gave me at Christmas, from an artist local to La Paz, BCS, Mexico, was still on MARCH as of yesterday.

It was further brought home when my friend Deb walked up there with me for a house tour on Saturday, and said, “Well, no wonder you can’t write here. This doesn’t feel like you.”

We walked down the hall to the room we’d designated the Library, but that we’ve never quite used enough, even though it’s the kind of room that beckons. (Does that make sense?) I don’t know if it’s the geography of the house, the fact that it has huge windows overlooking the side street, or what, but whenever we walk into that room, we tend to find a reason to stay. It helps, I think, that our old denim couch is up there. Further proof of the power of this room: when we moved the denim set upstairs, we had no problem getting the love seat into Fuzzy’s office, but he and his friend D could not manage to wrangle the couch into the library. They measured and found out it was four inches larger than the door, in every angle.

They were, in fact, about to tell me there was no way the couch would fit into that room when suddenly, miraculously, it just did.

I should have seen it as a sign, I guess.

So anyway, Deb and I sat on the couch up there, and she said, “This is where you need to write,” which is true. I love that room. We’d chosen our original offices based on having spaces of roughly equal size, but the reality is, I work from home. I need more space. I need big surfaces spread before me like blank paper. And I need bold colors.

Fuzzy and I talked about it, and he agreed we’d make it happen. Before bed on Friday, he’d made me a diagram with visio even printed cut-outs of all the furniture pieces, so that we could figure out how this could work.

It helps, I think, that I’ve needed to replace my desk for a while. The keyboard tray broke in shipping four years ago, and we’d used spit and twine to make it work, but several months ago it broke completely, crashing down on my foot. (MDF + Bare Feet = OWOWOWOWOWOW!) In retrospect, that was probably a sign as well. The desk is no longer made, the fittings for any tray can only be attached to the struts, and no tray we could find was the right size. The desk is taller than most, and too tall to use a laptop on top of for any length of time.

I was pretty sure we would have to wait to replace my desk til after my conference, but we went looking at desks so I could find some I liked and begin a budget plan, and then we walked into Staples, and they had this corner desk that I liked. I liked it so much that I walked away from the blue glass and steel desk I’d been eyeing, sat down in the pink typing chair near it, and said, “I like this.”

I looked at the price, and it said $99. I thought, “Oh, that’s probably just for this section,” as most such desks are sold in parts - one price for the desk, another for the return or hutch - but no, that was for the whole thing. And it got better - it was on sale for $89, and then there was $10 off on the website, and then I had a coupon for another $10.

We went home to think about it. Because I wanted to make sure. And because it was bigger than we’d planned, but Fuzzy moved the couch into it’s new position, and used empty boxes to show me how the space would work. “You won’t be able to get three people on the sofa,” he said.

When the hell do I NEED three people on the couch in my writing room?

I went online to check the dimensions again, and found out that the desk came in CHERRY as well as the maple we’d seen. Now, while my original desk was beach-glass-green and powder-coated steel, the supports for the desk were warm copper cherry, and my cabinet and rolling file are also copper cherry. This was a lighter cherry, but much closer in tone than maple. I called the store, and Connie said she didn’t have it in cherry, but she’d find out who did, then sent us to Cedar Hill. The Arlington store is about six miles from our house in one direction. Cedar Hill is about eight in another direction - we go there often - not too bad.

I managed to convince the sales person to give me the Internet-only discount, and we got my new desk for $69.

I came home and had to finish a project, and Fuzzy went upstairs and built it for me. (I bribed him with a cheeseburger, but still). He had a work issue come up, and at one point he was under the desk tightening screws and talking to a client, “I’m not the best person to help with this, and I’m sort of under a piece of furniture right now…”

Today, he’ll drop an ethernet port into the room for my desktop machine, though that has a wifi card in it as well, so it’s not urgent or anything. And I’ll start moving stuff over.

After all this, you’re probably wondering why the title of this is “Welcome to the Word Lounge.” It’s because I told Fuzzy he was not allowed to refer to my new space as an office. “I don’t want it tainted by BUSINESS,” I said. “It’s a creative space.”

“Okay,” he said, “It’s your ABODE OF WRITEYNESS.”

“Possibly,” I said, laughing, the way one does at four AM. “Or, I might call it, the Word Lounge.”

Pictures will be taken when everything’s all set up.

I slept badly last night - was having a pre-migraine aura, and then just couldn’t get comfortable, and ended up waking stiff and sore and with a raging headache. Never fun. Caffeine didn’t help, either. I slept a lot and vegged a lot, and finally forced myself to at least get the work-writing done today, but my prose had no sizzle or pop.

My mother suggested taking a bath, but I’m still squicked by the large spider I killed in my tub while Fuzzy was away, and I’m out of bubble bath, and honestly, when it’s nearly 100 degrees outside a bath is not really the thing, even for a Bathtub Mermaid like myself.

I confess that I sometimes have issues with the design of my bathtub. It’s luxuriously deep and wide, but you have to step up onto a tile step and then into the tub, and it’s just tall enough that I’m not quite comfortable with it, especially when my head’s all spinny. Once in a while I fantasize about getting a walk in tub, but replacing a tub surrounded by tile really isn’t on my list of Must-Do home improvements.

Building a wet bar in the closet, however…

A couple of months ago in the grocery store, I noticed a display of teak patio furniture including a storage bench with a padded seat. I have no need for teak furniture outside (though I love it) but I wanted the bench very badly, to put in my foyer, against the stairs.

Sadly, we vacillated and the next time we went to the store, they were out of benches.

Then, the night my parents arrived, we went back to do a “light” shopping (that cost $200 - I blame the Milano cookies for that) and they had the bench again. I made Fuzzy grab it, buy it, and take it to the car, while I went around filling my cart. He did, because he likes to make me happy.

The bench, in it’s flat-ship box, sat in the garage until Monday, when, finally Fuzzy put it together. It’s a bit deeper than I thought (the seat, not the storage bit) but I love the way it looks, and yes, at some point, I’ll take a picture.

The problem is…now I kind of want the teak patio furniture, too.

I haven’t had the energy to deal with the amazing amount of words spinning through my head, lately, as I’ve been unnaturally tired. Today, I was up at nine, but then went back to bed until noon, and I only now feel human.

As I write this, my favorite comforter is being laundered, so that as soon as I finish dinner I can change the bedding on our bed. What I really want to do is go shopping for new stuff, but I’m going to be good and not do that til after my conference in August, especially since I just ordered a second headset, thinking the one I bought in Feb was having vista issues.

It turned out that I was having Vista issues, but since this one identifies itself correctly, it’s still a better choice.

And now I have a backup. Backups are good.

The rice cooker just flashed from “cook” to warm, so it’s time to but my turkey burger on the grill, so I can eat, finish the laundry and go to bed.

Ah, cool sheets.
I might have to squeeze in a bath first, so I can enjoy them properly.

We just got back from our tour of the neighborhood, in which Zorro marked every tree and Miss Cleo, in her unerring clumsiness, managed to tromp through every fire ant mound in the mile-circuit we generally take. This was the shorter of our two mid-length routes: around the corner, through the park, across the street, around another corner, and down the long block home. I’m not sure what messages the dogs got this morning, but I noticed a few things:

• - The neighbors who share our back fence, and thus face the park, were in their driveway (all four of them) staring at their SUV and their boat, as if there was a telekinetic element to hitching the former to the latter. I noticed they have a shiny new (unstained) fence around the boat, separating it from the rest of the back yard. Of course, they hired someone to build the fence. I’m thinking they should have hired someone to teach them how to hitch up a trailer. I’m a city girl and even I know how to do this.
• - The neighborhood teens are being sloppy. The bench at the far end of the park had a pile of Dr. Pepper cans sitting on it. I realize the only trash can is at the play area, on “our” end, but still, we’re talking a length of maybe half a block. (Of course, we really should have trash cans at both ends.)
• - The people at the opposite end of the part from our back-fence neighbors have added one of those fire-pit tables to their front courtyard. It’s not a porch - our neighborhood doesn’t have them - but they’ve made a lovely outdoor courtyard in front of their main window. It’s a little too chi-chi even for me, though, with the gnomes and the fake parrot and such, but, whatever. It’s nice to see people sitting outside in lawn chairs on balmy evenings, and not in laz-e-boy recliners in the garage, which will forever strike me as tacky and weird.
• - The people with the cement dog that Miss Cleo barks at have new flowers - they look like Gerberas but they’re so perfect I suspect they’re fakes. We didn’t cross their lawn to confirm.
• - The people a few doors down from us who are trying to sell their house had some lovely wine racks in their always-open, apparently unattended garage. They also had something that looks like a lemonade stand sitting on the driveway. It was red.
  It made me want lemonade.
• - Our peach tree is still peaching. We lost some peachlets in the storm the other night, but the birds and bugs are feasting on those, and I think we’ll have a decent amount of peaches. I think they’ll be about ripe when my parents arrive in 2.5 weeks, but it might take a little longer. Also, the flowers in front of our main window? Are cheery and bright, and I’m glad we planted them.

And on that note, time to make coffee. and maybe a mushroom and dill havarti omelet.

The problem with allowing your dogs to sleep in the bed with you, especially if they’re terrier-esque, is that they tend to dig in the covers. The first time, it’s cute. The second time, less cute, but a bit annoying. After that? You tend to imagine that you can hear their little claws picking apart the sheets and comforter thread by thread.

It is, therefore, no surprise that I look at comforter sets and sheets sets in every store we enter that carries such things, though I rarely buy them. Sheets and quilts are surprisingly expensive, and I’m picky. 100% cotton is a given, but high thread counts, pretty colors, nice patterns. Our bedroom is really my second (third?) office, and I need the space to reflect that.

I tend to do for nautical stripes, blues and crisp reds, more than sweet floral things (to Fuzzy’s delight) but lately I’ve been straying on the pink side, if for no other reason than I wouldn’t have to worry about my hair staining the pillow cases.

I wonder if my froufrou taste in bed linens encourages the dogs.

…with apologies to Lewis Carroll. We noticed that a neighbor had an old grill on their sidewalk last Sunday, and as we passed it, Fuzzy teased, “You know how you keep saying you want a grill…”

I pointed out that since there was no sign saying otherwise that grill was probably out for trash. It looked much more than “gently used.” In fact the words, “natural disaster” sprang to mind.

The thing is, I do want a grill. We have one of those George Foreman counter-top things, but I want an outdoor grill, the kind with the propane tank and the froufrou grill cover, and the ceramic briquettes instead of real charcoal. I want to roast potatoes and grill salmon and steak all summer. I hate cooking inside when I don’t have to, and the Foreman thing’s okay, but there’s just something about actual FIRE that makes meat taste better.

Vegetables too, for that matter.