You may remember last week that I was waxing lyrical about a bookcase Steve and I purchased from that household Mecca IKEA last week. Well this innocent looking lump of wood ignited something in me I’ve gone to great pains to squash/hide…
When Steve and I married and moved in together we didn’t particularly struggle with merging our lives. Though we’re quite different we have similar interests so our CD and DVD collections, our wardrobes, our furniture and even our rhythms of life have meshed well without much of a hiccup.
I have to confess I was beginning to fell smug.
Saturday morning Steve and I woke late with large grins as this was the first weekend in about three months where we had no responsibilities or plans. Two days of uninterrupted leisure. Our first project, the bookcase and rescuing our lamenting libraries from his mixing studio and my cardboard boxes.
I’ve been waiting for a bookcase to display the friends I’ve loved so well for many years. I hadn’t quite realised how much thought I’d put into thinking about arrangement. When the bookcase was assembled and slid perfectly into place I quickly ran to my neatly prepared collection and thrust them onto the shelves in giddy abandonment. By the time Steve returned from his mixing studio his arms full of books the shelves were nearly full.
Protests and suggestions, begrudging compromises and frustration followed only to be diffused by Steve turning, hands on hips saying, “So this is YOUR bookcase is it?”
I felt terribly ashamed, I was behaving like a spoiled child. Who’d of thought that books could bring out such an emotional attachment and selfish desire? I swiftly apologised and asked Steve to arrange the shelves as he saw fair. While I sorted the remainder of the books in his studio into neat, categorised shelves. Ah the lessons I’m learning… xc