Friday, April 06, 2007
Oh, It's On
Trevor and I are doomed to have the first stand-off of our married life. It’s been building for a while, maybe since we moved in together three years ago. Maybe even before that.
Only it would have been more subtle back then. Back then, I would have giggled girlishly and said, “you sure have a lot of (cool) stuff!”
Now, it’s more like this:
“We should start a bag.”
“A bag?”
“Yeah, for Goodwill. Stuff we don’t want anymore. Stuff like….”
“You are not talking about Hula Girl.”
“Yeah I was, actually.”
“Look, let me keep some of the last elements of my personality.”
“How is Hula Girl an element of your personality, exactly? And where did you get her?”
“I bought her when I bought that other thing for whats-his-name.”
“You chose to buy that?”
“Just let me have some kitch!”
“She’s junk!”
“You need Hula Girl! In your Chevy! Driving to Vegas!”
“You don’t have a Chevy, we live in Toronto and you’re about to clean the kitty litter.”
Okay, I’m not without fault. I’m a messy person*. I’m chaos personified. I can tidy my desk and two minutes later it’ll look like a bomb exploded with really very little effort. But I’m also a purger. I cannot stand having stacks of stuff everywhere. Maybe it’s because things get so out of control around me. Too much stuff plus me are a deadly combination. I’d rather not see what could happen.
But if I’m a Messy Purger, Trevor is a Tidy Hoarder. He has stacks of magazine that he keeps because he might get around to reading them one day**. Shelves and shelves of books. Corners stacked, neatly of course, with technological stuff; cameras, film, DVDs, cables, instruction manuals, darkroom materials, software boxes.
I know there’s an emotional tie somewhere in there. Maybe this stuff represents everything he’s interested in, aspires to be and now I’m pulling it off shelves and stomping on it. Stomping on his dreams.
He doesn’t like me touching his stuff ever (with good reason, I suppose. I tend to break things). But that means there’s a good, say, 30% of the house I can’t touch. My stuff takes up one and a half bookshelves, 10% of the CD / DVD rack, a corner of the basement and a desk. That I share. And he never asks if he can use it. Because I guess it’s “ours”. Because he paid half. Okay, I guess I just argued myself into a corner.
He’s a very generous man. He’s exceedingly kind to me. But on this issue, it’s a showdown, dawgs. And we’re both Aries. I don’t know what that means, but there could be fire and fangs and roaring over mountains of gold junk (I'm also Year of the Dragon).
* It drives him craaaaazy.
** to his credit, he went through these and reduced considerably, even pausing to comment, "I wonder why I kept these?"
posted by Working From Home Today
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