Singing and Swearing

In between the whirring of the drill in the basement, I can hear Ray singing along to My Sharona.

Drill.
'My motor run.'
Drill.
'Come a little closer, huh.'
Drill.
'My, my, my, WOO!'
Drill.

He is building built-in bookcases for the office, which I requested so that we can remove the bookcase from our bedroom. Having nearly 300 books stuffed into your house without built-ins takes up a lot of room. Somehow our three-story house is barely big enough for Ray, me, the cats and my 300 book friends.

The built-ins are on the heels of my sawhorse desk that he built me for Christmas. Unfortunately for him, my wish list for Santa isn't as simple as ordering from Amazon. I asked him to create me a sawhorse desk with an old door we had. This was the result.

What you can't see on my shirt is that the cat is a DJ. He is wearing headphones and scratching vinyl.

As usual, it's perfect. The next step is to create an attic library around the desk so we can move some more books around.

My real goal in all of this is so that one day, when the reporter from the New York Times Magazine comes to profile me at my home for my amazing invention/Great American Novel/scientific discovery/ability to eat frozen pizza every night for a year, our house can be described as "book-lined."

It's also my not-so-subtle way of justifying my book buying habit – look at all this storage space we have now! – and keeping Ray flush with woodworking projects so he can justify his tool buying habit. I am such a good wife.

Right after My Sharona ended I heard: "Damn it. That's not gonna work!"

With all these bookcases to be built, there is no shortage of time he can spend singing and swearing at things in the basement. Ray is a lucky man.