Cathy: CH-CH-CH-Changes…

For this blog post, I didn’t want to moan about how we’ve been passing a handful of colds, sinus infections, ear infections, etc. since K had strep a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. So I won’t, but I couldn’t let go of mentioning it, of course. Tis the season; the temperature has dropped, schools are breeding grounds and buses are transportation devices for snuffy noses and coughs not covered. We’ll get over this round eventually, this is the one where we cough at night, but heads are so stuffed by day, the world sounds like I’m underwater in an old-fashioned diving suit, with the fishbowl headpiece.

What I want to do is give the update on something — I can’t even remember where I first mentioned it — my own blog post or a comment thread. But we did it. The room of my own that never was is now more populated. My husband, who has been roaming the house for a free space for his laptop for over two years, now has a space to do the design side jobs that make up the difference my lack of income brings for our family of six, plus cat and dog. S has already spilled hot cocoa on my husband’s keyboard, while sitting in Honey’s seat with an ice pack on his shin. The dramatic crawl from the bottom of the stairs where he stumbled a bit should win an Academy Award. Too bad I didn’t get it on film.

We’re still in the design phase: pictures need re-hanging, the box of papers to be filed has grown and yes, Honey’s desk is my old kitchen table, which was previously being used as a place to pile tools in the garage. I also need to re-organize my bulletin board, but I can live with it like this until the moment I get so frustrated with the chaos of it, I rip everything off of it to start over. I tried for a panorama view from my desk, which was facing out into the room and now faces the wall, but at least I still have a view out the window. [Click on any image for a larger view.] There are still mini-messes by everyone hovering, but for the moment, they are to a minimum. In other words, the sacrifice wasn’t so great. In fact, I now get to see my husband more now that he’s not wandering for a workspace to call his own. So this is my executive seat, in my humble corner, with my big bookcases, giant file cabinet, and that’s my mother-in-law in residence with Baby C. And to circle back for a revisit to paragraph one, we all feel crappy. But that’s just because of the colds. We’re pretty happy with the current arrangement.