Ever since I was a wee melodramatic Clause writing poetry in my upstairs bedroom, I have wanted a secretary. I don’t mean an efficiently organized human being who would make my travel plans for me (although that would be nice), but rather a desk with shelves, drawers, and hidden panels.
A few weeks ago, I was looking for a few kitchen items at my local thrift store and behold! Furniture was half off. I had forgotten my tween and teen dreams. Lord knows this overstuffed house does not need any furniture. But DP looked, because DP does, and he came up to me as I was looking at the books.
“There’s a barrister bookshelf with a secretary half off.”
“We don’t need any more—what? There is?”
And there was a walnut stackable glass-front bookshelf with a built-in secretary. Due to its stackable nature, it could be carried upstairs and it fit in my hatchback. And I type from it now. Touchstone books are at the top shelf, my manuscript I’m critiquing is next to the three books I’m using to write my damn syllabus at the back of the desk portion. Two tiny beloved pocket bears are perched in a cubby (my mother once climbed into a ravine to rescue them for me after I dropped them from a bridge at age 6 or so).
I’m living out my Emily Dickinson dreams. There is fog in the graveyard I can see from my window. I have not found the hidden panels yet, but there is time.
What are your melodramatic dreams?
Fangs and Clause 
I let my kids do the melodrama, but some shelving around my desk and a bigger file cabinet would be very nice. 🙂
I am very satisfied by this whole business. I love that you’ve always wanted a secretary and I love that you have one now.
My longtime domestic dream is a small jar of daisies on a tidy kitchen table by a cotton-curtained window. I achieve about 90 percent of this dream every couple months. Table: yes. Curtains: easy. Flowers: rarely. Tidy: ha.
Kitchen tables can be tidy? I never knew!
In my next life I want to use words and write sentences like Alexandra Fuller.
I might also want to grow up more primitively and on another continent.
You can write like Alexandra Fuller and be from the US. You can, you can!