My office isn’t safe from Kevin Costner
Even a cat knows a closed door means ‘don’t bother me’
Beautiful Wife came out to the kitchen table, again.
I thought we’d worked this out long ago. She has an office. It has a desk and a chair on wheels, a window, a computer screen the size of a movie drive-in, and a door.
When she closes the door, that means she’s working. She doesn’t hang a “do not disturb” sign on the door knob, but even the cat knows a closed door means “don’t bother me.” Got it.
My office is the kitchen table.
MAKESHIFT OFFICE
Now, to be fair, I do have a room designated as my office. It has a desk. The chair is a broken one from the kitchen. One of the legs is wonky, but I wrapped a bungie cord around all four legs, so the sick one stopped falling off when I was sitting there.
There’s a window, a door – and a couch that won’t fit anywhere else that I once tried to throw out.
“What ARE you doing?” BW demanded the day I started levering it out into the hall in advance of sending it to its final resting place, the curb where someone might snatch it up at night before the garage truck could haul it away.
“I never use it,” I pleaded my case. “You never use it. It just a storage place for Christmas presents for next year, boxes of chips for all the kids who didn’t show up for Halloween, and the cat.”
Baxter the cat looked up sleepily from its favourite sleeping spot.
“You can’t throw that out,” BW said of the couch. “It’s still in good shape and one day one of the kids might want it.”
Handsome Son lives in Ontario and Beautiful Daughter in Saskatchewan. They’re not going to tie it on top of their car and drive it across the country any time soon. I considered making that perfectly relevant point, for one second, saw The Look on BW’s face, and demurred.
The couch stayed. So did the cat. And the chips. And the dollhouse our two youngest granddaughters play in, on and around when they take over our house for two weeks each summer.
No matter. Long ago I’d pulled up stakes for the kitchen. Lots of light, a shelf nearby to hold hard drives, paper, chocolate bars. It just works for me.
But it doesn’t look like an office. And it doesn’t have a door.
COVID TRUCE
During the worst of Covid, BW reluctantly accepted the temporary surrender of a corner of her kitchen as my home office. That Covid truce is now over.
When BW leaves her office now, whatever I’m doing goes on hold to deal with whatever vital issue has come to her attention. This day it was Kevin Costner.
“Did you find it?”
“It?” “Yellowstone. The new season’s starting and I have to know what John Dutton is going to do with those awful kids of his.” “I looked it up online.” BW rolled her eyes.
“I did that. The first four seasons are there, but you have to pay to get the new season.”
I considered throwing the relevant amount of cash on the kitchen table to pay for a return to the peaceful kitchen of just a few minutes before. I demurred.
“It’s going to be on TV starting on Nov. 19.”
“Nov. 19! The story I read online said it’s starting this week.”
“We don’t get that channel. I’ve programmed the DVR to record it when it comes on. You won’t miss anything.”
STRANGE OBSESSION
Now, I happen to know BW’s interest is only mildly focused on the head of the bloody minded cowboy family in Montana portrayed in the hit TV series. The reality is BW and Kevin Costner have had a thing going since he starred in the movie Dances With Wolves.
When I mentioned this – what I consider a strange obsession with a very average looking actor – to a colleague at work, My Colleague slipped into a thousand-yard stare before replying, somewhat dreamily. “Yeah, I can see that.” Back in my kitchen, BW marched back into her office, unimpressed and I settled back into the work I was doing. Writing this column.
Five minutes later, her door opened.
“Did you try looking online somewhere else? It must be out there somewhere.”
This column took much longer to write than usual. Sorry about that.