Mine! Goes the Greedy Id!

The screen door that separates my office from the conservatory is purely decorative. A beautiful Victorian piece with  scallops and circles and cut-outs that resemble dunce caps laid sideways, it was something my prince found and fitted to the doorway of what was once an open upstairs porch.

The little glassed room that replaced the porch has doors and a skylight, both fitted with screens for the bugs. So the one inside is entirely useless.

But I love to see the plants through it. Particularly in the morning, when I walk into the office with my coffee and there's this perfect green world floating there, sunny like no other place in the house, flower filled and sweetly scented with jasmine and gardenia and -- right now, a stand of paperwhite narcissus.

Mine! Goes my greedy id. Mine! Mine! And I open the door and go out to sniff this and that and pinch off a yellowed leaf and note that ther gerbera is returning from a near death experience and has three fat buds coiled near its base and ready to burst. And I sit in my Alice chair and drink my coffee...

The richness of this experience, of course, depends on the door. Like opening one of those gold Godiva boxes what do they call them (she scurries to open another internet window)? Ah yes, a ballotin.

And yet, last fall this delight of my life was nearly destroyed, How? The prince of course.



I had turned my back for a minute (one must never do this around him) and the door was gone. Over the past 30 years I've learned that if you want something done you must insert the idea very casually, as if you pretty much do not want it at all, and then pay no attention to him, because if you watch it will never take place.

Or worse, it will take place in parts -- with the next part dangled in space like teasing a horse with a carrot, always an inch too far away to chomp. Take the basement for example...

The conservatory happened in correct fashion. One day I off handedly said, "Hmmm...maybe we could put up some plastic around the porch for my tropicals?" And then pretended to forget about it. Next thing I knew, I had a sky box.  

So, to keep things as they are you must always say, "I want that changed." And the more insistent you are the more assured you'll be that he'll leave it alone. So I should have said, I hate that door, it has to go. Why the hell would we hang a screen door inside the house?

But I didn't, and so he took it down. And now we had to have an arguement about putting it back up, which... oh shit, I don't feel like relating it. Please see Circular Arguments and you'll get the idea.