The Desk Delimma

 

I have three desks in my house and a drop-leaf table that also doubles as a landing place for my laptop. I don’t use that laptop much, mostly I keep it for back up in case my main tower with my attached ergonomic keyboard and large monitor goes down, but I think that will change after I move. There will be plenty of public places on the campus---outside and inside---where I’ll be able to sit and write guilt-free without the worry that I'm taking up space a business needs to make a living. When I write in public places, now---or rather in my pre-pandemic world---I’d write long-hand, always careful to make sure others aren't waiting for a table. But even with the new freedom I'll have on campus, most of my computer time will still be spent in front of my curved keyboard. I’ve used it for so many years that I find other keyboards painful and clumsy.

Then I have my husband’s oak roll top that I wrote about before. I dearly love that desk but it’s got to go. I also have a desk and chair that I refinished in the 1960s during my Fruitwood Period and all things Early American, a secretary where I used to sit and write long-hand penpal letters, round robin letters and letters to Vietnam service men---boys, really, mostly just out of high school who got drafted with a few gun-ho, committed-to-the-cause guys sprinkled in who enlisted. I haven’t used that desk in many years but I still love it and enjoy looking at it when I pass by it sitting in my art & crafts room and hopefully I can find room for it in my future bedroom. If so, I’ll press it back into service as my center for charging devices, keeping my day planner and paying my bills. The bedroom is the only room that will have a door I can close when I want to keep prying eyes out of my business. Ya, my half bath and laundry will also have doors but they will protect a different kind of privacy….

Then I have the quality-built oak, computer wardrobe that I’ve been using for the past 15 years. I’ve logged so many hours sitting at the wardrobe that I wouldn’t be surprised if we shape-shifted into one, inseparable entity. She and I have a love/hate relationship though. I love her doors that can swing closed and lock off my business very quickly. It’s got a ton of space for everything and then some. But I hate that I always have the inside of her trashed out with dozens of Post-a-Notes, a cluster-muck of pens, pencils, rulers, papers to file and dust. If I didn't have those doors, would I keep a neater desktop? Absolutely. I am a vain person when it comes to the impression my house makes on others. When my realtor opened my walk-in closet door, I died ten times over. That place and my computer wardrobe show the stormy side of how my brain works---the messy, careless, get-it-out-of-sight, everything-piled-haphazardly-on-top-of-each-other side. It kills me that my new place will not have a door on the master closet. Where will I hide my messy side and where will the bogyman hide? My bed is too low to the floor so maybe the universe will send a bogy-child instead?

I also hate how hard it’s become for my old bones to thread the wires and cords through the computer wardrobe to the cable manager. I don’t have to do it often---only when I need to take the tower into get serviced or I need to replace it or a printer---but I just can’t get down on the floor to do it anymore. Well, I could get down, it’s the getting back up that’s the impossible part. This wardrobe has to go for that reason and because it’s too big for the miniature office/hobby room I’ll have in my new place. Thus the late night online shopping for a smaller unit to organize my office area.

Shopping for a new computer desk has taught me: 1) No matter how much you plan to spend you can’t find a quality built desk configured as well as the cheap ones; 2) The cheap ones come in a box like a giant puzzle that you either have to spend three hours putting them together or hire a service that specialized in that kind of thing; 3) Because of Covid-19 several companies I've contacted thought their chatlines no longer offer shipping to the room of your choice for an extra fee. They park the 100+ pound box at your front door; and 4) because so many people are working from home now, computer desks are selling like snow cones on the desert and are out-of-stock almost before you can save them on your Wish List.

But the most distressing thing I learned is that most desks these days are built without pullout keyboard trays as more and more people are using laptops. It took me two weeks of bedtime shopping to find out that for us dinosaurs we can buy monitor shelves to solve the no-keyboard tray problem. And most of the smallest desks being sold also don’t have places for a printer. It also took me two weeks of shopping to figure out why. They want you to buy a separate printer stand on wheels that you’d supposed to tuck away in a space I won’t have. 

I’ve debated about ordering a desk after I move in like I plan to do with some of living room furniture and area rugs, but they take 3-4 weeks to get delivered and the son-I-wish-I-had thinks it would be nicer to be able to set up my computer and it get working with Wi-Fi, etc. on move-in day and that would be my dream scenario. I found the ideal set up for a computer desk---at least for me---but I want to take the photo of it out to the Amish built furniture store to see if they’d custom order one configured like I want only made with better wood. Those the particle board made desks they sell online won’t hold up more than a few years before they get saggy. The Amish place custom-made our kitchen table so my husband’s wheelchair fit nicely under it but they only had to modify an existing plan. If it took them a few months to build, I’ve got the time to wait. Fingers crossed they'll do it at a price I'm willing to pay which is pretty high, let me tell you, since the majority of my time is spent at my keyboard and I don't see that changing after I move. I have a dozen projects lined up in my head.

Next week when I take a trip to the Amish place, and while I'm on that end of the county, I'll stop at the PODS place to get information on using one for packing up my life after the house sells. With the listing timing my realtor and I mapped out I'll be homeless for a couple of weeks but that will save me having to waste time and money on getting a bridge loan. During that time I plan to take up niece's offer to let me stay at her cottage. The POD, in that scenario, will go in their indoor storage facility and I will just have to worry about keeping two house plants alive. My niece would have welcomed Levi to use the cottage, too, so I'm pretty sure she'll let me litter up her place with my plants even though she's not a "plant" person.

I have a third house plant, a Hoya, that I've had since I was seventeen and it was tiny cutting given to me by an elderly friend when I visited his greenhouse full of Hoyas in every color known to Man, but it's showing its age and not in a good way. I'm kind of hoping it will die this summer so I don't have to move it or murder it. It took it over 38 years for it to have its first flowers---duh, the old guy didn't tell me it needed full sun for that to happen---and when it blooms twice a year now, the flowers are truly beautiful but SO stinky sweet it fills up the entire house and I have to pick them and throw them out or they'll give me a headache. That plant is a metaphor for my life in a way; I'm good at waiting and planning for beautiful things to come along but when they do I can only enjoy that anticipation fulfilled for such a short time before I'm asking myself, "Was it worth it? Would I do it again? What's next?" ©

That's the Hoya plant back in the corner and below are what the flowers looks like.

 

 

P.S. From an earlier post you may remember that the-son-I-wish-I-had wanted to do a barter on the roll top desk and he thought he could talk his wife into it, but she was firmly against it. So I am now getting ready to list it on e-Bay---what a job trying to empty it out! It has 29 drawers and seven cubby holes plus a secret hiding place. Big things like that do sell there for local pickup. I sold 6-7 restored antique gas pumps on e-Bay after my husband died and the buyers each arranged for a freighting company to pick them up and prepare them for long distance shipping on their dime. Crossing my fingers that the desk will sell as easily at those old pumps did.