I think there's a fundamental difference between me and her. Just get the fucking shelves. We have a room full of boxes from our move – books, exercise equipment, more books, suitcases. It was supposed to be a room where I can write and focus on what I really love to do. A place where my day job stays out and I can pretend to be the next great writer, a designer, an artist. But there's no AC in the room, no shades, and the boxes seem to multiply. Can't find a place for it, chuck it in the study.
White people problems.
She sent me images for a perfect bookshelf. Not a real bookcase, she said. She wanted something that is part of the wall, which would involve me learning how to rip apart the molding, acquiring a saw, raw wood, sander, paint, varnish and the ability to put it all together according to the image. Even Jesus had quit carpentry.
Let's get this unit from Ikea, instead. She thought it would look bad. Have you seen those things, she asked. Yes, I've seen them – they're perfectly fine and I could put it together in a weekend and we'd have the apartment pretty much done. Well, almost – we would need to get blinds, remove the extra dryer that we bought off Craigslist, and organize the closet a bit better. But having a place to store our books would go a long way in completing the apartment. For fucks sakes, we'd been in the place for six months and it still looked like we had just gotten off the plane from San Francisco.
I could really build the unit from Ikea. They have this great tool online where you can spec out the type of unit you want, get a printout and just pick up the materials from the store. We're urban people, I said. And I have other stuff to do.