What work space?

Work space? What's that? Seriously, I used to have a really neat office. That was, let me see, um, eight years ago when we first moved into this house. The reason we moved was because I had no room to work in our old house--my office was a small sitting room off the master bedroom and I was literally going crazy for lack of space. I could actually stand it before my husband retired because I could spread out to the kitchen or the living room or dining room. I could walk around and talk to myself--well, I could talk to my characters and they talked back--so I guess that qualifies, since the characters were in my head.

But then my husband retired. And suddenly the cute little patio home we bought after all our kids were grown and gone and we sold the two-story five-bedroom home we no longer needed was entirely too small. Worse, I no longer had any privacy at all. I couldn't even talk on the phone without every word being heard by my newly retired hubby.

After about six months of being cooped up in my tiny office, I gave my husband an ultimatum. He could either go back to work, I could rent an office somewhere else, or we could buy a bigger house with a decent-sized office for me. He thought about it for about ten minutes. Then we moved. But you know that law about people managing to spend whatever income they bring in? Well, the same goes for filling up space. The office that seemed so huge to me in June of 1999 miraculously filled up to the point where I now have stacks of papers piled on the floor, all three bookcases are jammed full and overflowing, my desk hardly has an inch of free space, and every filing cabinet needs cleaned out so there's room for more papers.

Wonder what hubby would say this time if I said we had to move again? :)



Pat