office + space

 So, let me just start by saying I still love my Mommy Cave. iIf you remember, it’s right off the kitchen, so it’s so super convenient to duck in there to blog, organize projects, reply to emails, or figure out schedule stuff. It’s really a wonderful space, and I’m so glad to not have the kids’ backpacks tumbling into my making-dinner business. I mean, let’s be clear, the backpacks do tumble into our business, just not as much.
But a couple things have happened this month to make me need a little more office space. First, I’ve been writing Love Rules, which has really stretched me. I’ve needed a little more quiet time with God to get His message right. Sometimes a Mommy Cave gets too many little visitors who love to sit on my lap while I write.
Also, the weather here lately. For about the past month, almost every day has been a high of 77 degrees with tons of sunshine. It just feels so wrong to be inside when everyone else in Houston (including the ten thousand squirrels that call our back yard home), are partying right outside my window.
So. I had a plan.
M would probably like to interject here that I ALWAYS have a plan. So far in our marriage, I’m averaging about a 50% success rate of plans that a) don’t hurt any family members and b) actually work like I think they will.
Luckily for me, that success rate was good enough for M to help me with my vision for an outdoor office. Yes, he may have called this idea a “hair-brained scheme” (to himself), but those thoughts didn’t stop him from risking snake bites and flying bark to clear our part of the forest behind our house.
While he was clearing, I rescued this ancient table from my closet. This is the third time I’ve rescued this sad (but handy!) little table.
First, I found it in a dumpster when Lutheran South Academy moved sixteen years ago, and they threw it away. I painted it white and set it up as the SUPER CLASSY entry table at our townhouse and house on Carriage Hill.
Then, I rescued it again when we moved to this house and upgraded to an actual table in the entryway. I think the general consensus of anyone who looked at the pathetic little thing was THROW IT AWAY!, but I shoved it into my already-crowded closet. It sat in my closet for years, where I used it to hold the clothes I was too lazy to hang up (is anyone else too lazy to hang up clothes? Please say yes.). Just when I decided it was time to grow up and start putting away my clothes rather than throwing them on a table, I got the great idea for this outdoor office, and the table has met its final resting place. Right out there among its tree friends.

Besides the annoyed squirrels who register their anger by pelting me with acorns, the office has been wonderful. The owls looks at me a little strangely. Our dogs are confused about what I’m doing outside and stare at me, but the view is so peaceful.

Perhaps the best view is this last one. Even though I feel like I’m in my own world, my people are only a few feet away, waiting for me.

And the dogs are, of course, panting by the door for me to come to my senses and get inside.