Saturday, June 10, 2000

11:46 p.m. It's show-and-tell time, and what fun that is for an office-bound person like me ... I love having visitors to my space. Usually they run out screaming before I can finish the tour, so I'll start with the scariest item first ...

1. My scrap-paper collection. See those neat-as-a-pin piles to the left of the number 1? Used paper. Yes. Used paper. For the laser printer, which is now hidden below the same number 1. Each and every sheet has been stamped on the used side, in the middle, in red with a swirly flowery stamp.

Rationale: A mountain of manuscripts flows into and out of our office, and we use this used paper all the time. The laser printer has been running continuously since 1984, and that's a lot of used paper. Irrationale: It's really really fun to stamp the pages.

To the right of the number 1 and above the file cabinets, is -- oddly -- a big square of white space. It won't be there for long. I must fill it. It is my mission. I am an artist and white space is my enemy. I painted that wall in September, and it's a good thing I did. Those empty cabinets are really, really heavy and I hope they don't fall through the floor when they are full.

Too bad about the heating vent, which is now blocked. It's the only heat outlet to this office, by the way. Luckily, it didn't work very well when I sat right in front of it the first winter here, so I hope it will be all right back there behind cabinet number 4. I suppose it's something I should start worrying about now, anyway, just to get a head start.

2. Fabric lei garlands from Mary Ann's Gilligan's Island Cookbook. It's too bad the marijuana scandal happened after the book tour was over. It was a brief tour, hardly much longer than a three-hour tour. Mary Ann was very professional, wore navy blue and middy braid, and theatrical makeup. She's perky and short.

I believe the garlands liven up any corner of any room, and they look quite cheery hanging from the long, prison-style locking mechanism that seems to be permanently affixed to the side of file cabinet number 5, if you're counting clockwise from the laser printer, which is my plan, and file cabinet number 3, which is in the middle.

3. The old office chair. This is the one with the sliding-off seat, not to be confused with the new one with the springing-off seat. I'm going to have to affix velcro to my posterior parts.

4. Another table. The nice solid-door surface, with locking doorknob still attached because I can't figure out how to get it off. More stacks of a proposal I'm sending out.

And now for the new white cabinets, which are pictured on the right in the early morning light. Oh, oh, oh how I love the early morning. I put my mug of fresh hot coffee right there on the top of one to show the size and proportion before I even had a sip -- that's how dedicated I am. If I'd had a sip, I would have realized that I should have put the mug on the back of the other cabinet, to balance the shot.

So, yes, in the light of day they need a good scrubbing down and a wonderful paint job. I still don't know about colors in this office, but now that I have the file cabinets, the last space is filled and decisions can be made. I favor crayon colors. I also fantasize stenciling some words and letters about, and I may do just that, now that I am mature and more skilled in the areas of Exacto and Espongo.

I won't go into what I'm going to do about the file drawer on the bottom left side. Will the fact that it's sort of gappy eat at my soul? Will I figure out how to fix it, or will I stick a little piece of wood there in the gap? Will I look for classy pulls for the 41 drawers I now have? Or will I enjoy the motley and in fact, celebrate the strange lineup? What would Martha do?

Why do I think she ran screaming out of here before we even got to the lei?