I need an office

It just hit me. I need an office.

I need a brown office with a brown leather chair, brown desk, dark hardwood polished mahogany floors, bookshelves detailing my intellect, pictures detailing the happiness of my family, where I beat and/or molest my sons with my belt.

No, seriously, I need a place to not have to be around Lucy while she's playing Zelda. It's the sensory overload that kids love--the sights, the sounds--that's turning me off.

It's bright lights and bright colors, and there's a sound for everything. Link is yelling, shit is blowing up, monsters are electrifying themselves audibly and they roll at link with giant hard carapaces that sound like dirt bikes, and Lucy has taken to pushing the Wii's home button to pause the game and freeze the action about ten times per minute, sometimes rapid-fire five or six times in three seconds, and of course it makes a nice little menu sound every fucking time. Even with the tv volume turned down to 5, it's like bleach pouring into my ears.

So where do I go? To avoid constant distraction from all adult thinking, I need a separate room. And right now in my apartment, there are three rooms available to me, that aren't the living room. One is my room, with the bed, and not the comfy couch. Another is the kitchen, with a hardwood table and hardwood chairs, and not the comfy couch. The third is the bathroom.

You see my dilemma? BB is finally sleeping, I took the kids outside today, got them dressed and fed, and .. gosh ... darnit... if this fucking game doesn't beep constantly when the player is down on hearts. I was a good dad today, and I deserve a little break.

Also, Lucy deserves a little time to do something she loves. This is exactly what she wants to do right now and she's happy, and it's not filled with advertisements, or even characters that talk at you and don't encourage reaction.

I was thinking about putting on headphones, but that requires sound directly in my ears, and I'd rather just have less sound, overall. And it involves me getting up. And I'm tired. And I don't want to have to get up to do one more thing. But fuck dude, this job of mine is right at home, and I've gotta do it. I've gotta do it.

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My landlord is DRAGGING HIS FUCKING FEET with moving us out of here. See, we're waiting on him to get the flooring re-done downstairs, so we can switch apartments in this big, century-old duplex house we share. He's got the bigger place downstairs, and wants to switch with us. He's never frickin home, so it seems like it would be good for all of us.

I dunno. Maybe it's time to move. Again. We've been in this place for three years. That's not that long. Can't we stay here a little longer? This waiting is driving me nuts. My best bet is to wait it out, and get the awesome apartment downstairs with a double basin sink and fucking twice the space as this place. I want it I want it I want it.

Landlord said he'd have us down there by MARCH. Criminy. The waiting. The waiting. The waiting. The dwindling faith. The having to rely on others. The weighing of enslavement to rent wages versus the high price of home ownership. The lack of time and energy when one parent is stuck raising kids and the other is stuck at a full-time job. It's all so depressing.

We're lucky to have this place, it's in the middle of a much richer neighborhood than us. I mean, the people living around here are like, established, money-making, middle-aged parents who have their shit together and own houses with nice-looking yards. And Megan and I just rent this tiny little upstairs apartment in the middle of it all.

We've got a sweeeeet park right next to us, we live literally one block away from Megan's work, it's close to the U District, Capitol Hill and downtown, wi-fi is included in the rent ... it's too good to let go.

Looks like we're waiting! In the meantime, it would be great to have a room to go to to just have some quiet time. But I don't get that right now.

Holy shit, Lucy just made it somewhere on Zelda that I don't know how to get to, and it's all interesting, and I'm actually enthused about where it might go, and then ... "Can I play Mario 64?" sheepishly.

"Ok, honey."

Today at the park I got a phone call about a video internship in Woodinville. This lady lives up there, and she has two video bays in her home, and she makes documentaries. She's trying to put together a non-fiction film festival. She needs help putting some projects together in Final Cut Pro.

Tomorrow morning at 10, I'm gonna go over there and see what she's all about, and what kind of time commitment I'm looking at. And I gotta talk to my school to see if I can get credit for it.

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Maybe not a brown office, but a studio... with the room divided with the control room on one side and the performance room on the other, and like a big ass couch and not two but three comfy chairs, and a big ass mixing board and like all this shit ...