Finally. Window Trim

I’m not sure you’d call our home office a hellish landscape, but it certainly possesses many characteristics that bring forth wailing and gnashing of teeth. It’s a place where books, magazines, catalogs, bills, receipts and permission slips go to not necessarily die, but to at least lay in obscurity. There’s an inbox, where all things paper go, and an overflow inbox, where excess paper goes.

Even with most of our bills paid automatically and online, we still get an inordinate amount of incoming paper, most of it farm related – seed tags, cattle registrations, invoices, sale catalogs, boxes of parts, any outgoing shipments. It’s more like a warehouse than an office.

The furnishings are totally utilitarian – a few filing cabinets, supporting Lowe’s countertops. Some shelves, a computer, a printer.

The only things declare it an office instead of a loading dock are a barrister’s bookcase, and an 1860s-vintage portrait of a family relative.

Adding to the machine-shop feel of the place were the windows, with no trim. The Walmart curtains helped keep the draft out, but lent to the entire dungeon-like aspect of the place.

The only good thing it had going for it is a door that I can at least close so I don’t have to look in there.

But after years of back and forth on the trim, the demands degraded to wants, and then the wants to tolerances. We both went from what we had to have, to what we would endure. And after ten years, we have trim around the windows in the office, and I even got one of the windows painted.

This is what compromise looks like. It’s not what I wanted, it’s not what Scott wanted. But we both really like it. And now, instead of being distracted by the hideous Walmart curtains, I’m distracted by the newborn calves out the window.

I may still dread my inbox, but at least now I don’t dread my office.