Furniture & Marriage

I've been noticing differences between Melanie and I lately. I mean, besides the obvious ones, that I have these hard proby guy parts and she has these moist succulant girly parts.

It's the way we consider, think about, treat, and respect furniture.

Melanie does.

I don't.

I'm not sure I can articulate this but I'll try.

My father was a furniture builder and made some amazing stuff. Half or more of our furniture when I was growing up was furniture he built, everything from our family room end tables to the dining room hutch. The basement was his wood shop, and it was - as we Hugheses are - well endowed. Table saws, band saws, work benches, hand tools, electric tools, glues, screws, spray cans, laqueres, paints, sandpapers, and sawdust, lots of sawdust. I've seen furniture built from the ground up and I recognize and like it.

I don't respect it as much as Melanie does. She and her family bought furniture. To get it, they, like most people, paid for it.

Maybe I always took furniture for granted?

Here's an example. If I had a party when my parents were away once - I'm not saying I did, but if I did - and someone let a cigarette burn out on the living room table, my parents might have been pissed off when they came home and saw the burn mark. (Oh man were they.) But I knew my father could make another table. I was in trouble, but it wasn't the same as a parent saying, "you just burned hundreds of dollars of my money." I knew the worse I'd be into my father was for the cost of the lumber.

So maybe I think of furniture as disposable, or easily replaceable.

Melanie likes good furniture. She's sacrificed for it and she has a good eye, and she has very nice furniture.

Very nice furniture.

Then, poor dear, she married me.

I have an antique banker's desk in our 2nd bedroom/office. I bought it years ago at a place near where I grew up, and I love it. Rich dark wood, desktop slightly cracked and uneven, rugged. Manly. It's a man's desk. They won't let you buy this desk until you promise whisky or beer will reside on it at all times, preferably near a defecating horse.

So here's what married life is to me. I put coasters under drinks before I put them down on furniture Melanie bought, but I put naked, condensation-dripping beer bottles down on my banker's desk and glory in the wonderful way this ages the wood.

Who's right?

Of course - you saw this coming, right? - both of us.  I think we understand and acknowledge the differences even if we don't adopt them. That's why I love her. For that, and for many other reasons.

Like those moist succulent girly parts...

Oh shit, sorry, need to go, left that naked Dewers on the dining room table a while back there...