The Desk I Should Be Grateful For

 I can't remember if I've mentioned formerly, but my husband loves everything to be fancy.  He likes those ornate, dark, huge bedroom sets that only belong in 10,000 square foot homes with 18 foot ceilings.  He wants everything to be grand, and that means cost at least five grand.

I like simple.  I like a
 board over Ikea legs for a desk.  I like my desk to be just deep enough for a laptop and keyboard.  I like to have room to put things on the wall.  Maybe a shallow set of book shelves and some floating shelves with ends for more books.  If I didn't have a cat maybe I'd put up some little potted plants, too.

An approximation of my ideal desk:

Approximation of his ideal desk:

So yesterday I gave him the go ahead to rearrange our office area to make it work better for both of us.  Now we have matching desks, and my desk went from being imperfect but simple, to being fancy and impossible.

To be fair, he did work really hard on it and was so excited.  I couldn't bear to say I didn't like it.   I did like it, in a way, because it was clever.  He is a clever arranger of things.  

Unfortunately for me, I find it extremely overwhelming.  It didn't help that, at the time, there was piles of things everywhere (as you can see from the picture), which elevated my anxiety level.  It's just so big!  

So hubby says to me last night, "I'm all done.  Go ahead and move your stuff back in."

I look at the beautiful, fancy, elaborate desk that he has just created out of legos for me and that's it.  I just stare at it.  I can't even begin to know where to begin.  I have this huge stack of books that I should put somewhere, but the cubbies are full of baskets and the baskets are full of stuff.  Not my stuff, just stuff that is community property.  I can't put the books on the very top because the cat will definitely knock them down.  I can't put them in the cubbies even if I take out the baskets because the cat will knock them down.  

Oh there is plenty of storage space, but none of it is actually available for me to use.  ::sigh::

On top of that, I always wanted plenty of space to hang up framed art, or have a bulletin board.  There is hardly any wall space left after the building of this monstrosity.

I just can't even.

So three days go by while I stare at this desk and try to figure out what I'm going to do.  I get the anxiety attack, I walk away and I come back to it.  The third morning I wake up feeling quite rested, so I think to myself, "today is the day.  I can totally do this.  I'm rested, I'm not grumpy.   Maybe my issues are more related to being tired."

So I got up and I went to the desk and I started taking all the big baskets out of the shelves.  I took most of them out and piled them somewhere else and then started trying to figure out what to put on the shelves instead of them.  Without the baskets, the shelves did feel more open, however I ran into a mental block on what to put on them.  The shelves are high so anything I put on them must be heavy enough that the cat won't be able to knock it off on to the floor.  None of my possessions meet this criteria.

I feel weird saying this but, I started having an anxiety attack again.  I started freaking out.  I had to walk away because I couldn't even look at the desk.  

This is when I realized that time wasn't the answer, and sleep wasn't the answer.  I would have to either hide from my desk or conquer it like a monster by tearing it to pieces.  I had to talk to quite a few people about it.  I couldn't decide whether to hide or fight.  I felt guilt - because my husband worked so long to make it for me and was so excited about it.  I finally decided to remodel it and then break it to him gently while showering him with good food and chocolate.  

That is what I did.  I completely dismantled the desk, rearranged it into a simpler and more suitable shape, and bought a lot of chocolate.  Then I made an ugly, but delicious pot pie and waited for him to come home and discover what I had done.

He did come home.  I warned my room mate.  I wanted to give him the opportunity to escape the storm if he wished.  When my husband got home I said something like, "I may have made some slight modifications to the desk."  I also said, "there are a few peace offerings on your desk."  I added, "I'm making you a pot pie for dinner."

He walked into the room and said, "What the fuck!  You didn't just make a few changes. You undid everything that I did."  Then he slammed the bedroom door and took a shower.

That was the worst of it.  I left him alone for a while.  He passed out and slept for a while.  We talked about it when he woke up.  His reasons for the upset were that I had told the room mate before him and that I hadn't told him I needed to change it right away.  I explained to him that his brother was standing right by him and I didn't really feel like saying, "Uh, no, this isn't working for me, you're going to have to change all of it."  I really did like it and wanted to try to make it work for me, it just didn't, even though I spent three days trying.

He seemed to accept that explanation and everything returned to normal.  Hugs all around.  He said, "I guess the most important thing is that you like it."

Do I feel like a bitch?  A little bit.  I almost always say "I love it!"  I usually mean it 100% and even if I don't, I love it for the thought put into it.  I'm willing to make sacrifices because I value people more than things.  In this situation though, I'm unwilling to budge.  

The desk has to be just right.