Invasion of My Desk

My desk, in fact, my entire office, was neat when I left it on Friday. But I come in on Sunday morning (after being gone all day Saturday at a speaking engagement) to find a fort built on one side, toys scattered all over the desk, my husband's pile of weekend work beside my monitor, an empty soda can, several empty glasses, notes, pens, my favorite post-it pad with scribbles on it, my tape dispenser (which has been a bright pink note taped on one side that says, "Mom's Tape: Do NOT TAKE OUT OF THE OFFICE") gone, and shoes and socks under my chair that don't belong to me.

Not to mention my wallpaper and color scheme on my computer have been changed. Again.

I love my family, don't get me wrong, but when they mess with my office, I seriously consider adopting every last one of them out.

No one seems to understand that this is MY space and they need to leave it alone. I don't want cute kitten wallpaper. I don't like sand-colored color schemes. I like to see my tape dispenser where it's supposed to be so that when I need some tape, it's there. And I already do enough dishes, thank you very much, so the last thing I want to do is cart MORE of them downstairs to the dishwasher.

I ordered the fort taken down. Which it mostly was. The things that had been moved to make room for the fort assembly weren't put back, so I'll have to get on the kids about that. They'll be good about it--they seem to be the most understanding about this being Mom's space and when I ask them to get their stuff off my desk or out of my office, they tend to listen.

The worst offender is my husband. Who, I might add, has a pristine office at his company that scares away dust bunnies. I'm not quite sure why he thinks it's okay to leave soda cans and shoes and socks in mine. It's an invasion, to be sure, and I need to find a way to launch a counter-attack. Perhaps when he gets to work on Monday morning, he'll find a few things on his desk ;-)

After all, I'm a writer. I can get pretty imaginative ;-)

Shirley