minalisms

For someone who is big on doing nothing during her time off, I certainly did a bunch this weekend.

Trips to California do that; they’re never boring, and it’s during those trips that I remember just how many people I am connected to and how good it feels to be surrounded by those who understand you and your context.

I’m coping with that familiar melancholy that comes after saying goodbye (again) to my relatives and close friends out West — there’s just no one in St. Louis who compares to my crew of parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends.

But there’s a reason for that.

I’d be lying if I said the few(er), sometimes shallow relationships I have in St. Louis weren’t my own fault. One minute I am bragging about my preference to spend normal evenings and weekends at home doing nothing, and in the next breath I allude to the lack of connections I’ve made here in my new home city. And yet all this time the correlation had escaped me …

Over the weekend I bought another fabulous piece of furniture for our dining room. Seeing as how the room already looked like this, you might wonder what the heck more I could fit in. But our new stemware cabinet is the tops — not only are its dimensions p.e.r.f.e.c.t. for the space, its wood matches that of our table and chairs too.

But it took me more than two hours to assemble the sucker by myself, and that pleased me not … which brings me to my next thought: Please point me to the inventor of the hex key (aka Allen wrench) so that I could chop his hands off.

Seriously, when did it become the norm for Americans to assemble a two-ton piece of furniture with a 3-inch piece of L-shaped steel? And where are the other gimps with cramped and paralyzed hands as a result of this sorry excuse for a tool?

Dear World Market, IKEA and Futon-Shop-on-Delmar: When I give you my hard-earned dollars, you give me 348 parts that I must take home and put together myself. I am resigned to this customer-unfriendly approach of yours, and to my slow, shaky path to success with most DIY projects. But if you still plan to sell furniture that requires so much assembly, do not send me home with a measly Allen wrench. I will stick it in your eye (and then chop off your hands too).

Call me what you will, but there are days when I don’t want to share my husband with anybody, not his clients nor his friends, not even his family.

Because after 40-plus-hour workweeks and agendas and impromptu errands and frenetic meal preparations and follow-up chores and ladies nights one evening and tennis matches the next and, oh yeah, sleep, I am territorial about my time with my spouse. In fact, if it weren’t such a crazy move, I’d post a big “Do Not Disturb” sign outside our front door because that’s how much I mean it.

I love Ben because he gets this.

This past weekend, seeing that I was in need of mellow couple time, he took me out on dates. Dates that included sushi, “Julie & Julia,” an art fair, Nutella and a lazy drive one night; and beers, burgers, a nighttime stroll and reminiscing on another.

As I waited to fall asleep late Sunday, I felt like my heart was going to explode from contentment and gratitude. And that is precisely why I married him.