My wife rules

Check it out yo. This here is my office. Its walls are black.













Yeah, that's right: black. When we bought our house and I knew that I was going to have an office of my very own that was mine all mine to do absolutely whatever I wanted to with it, my first thought was that I wanted to paint the walls black. All black. Black Album black. And I did.

It had been a young girl's room before. The only evidence that remains of this fact is the multi-colored ceiling fan with glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the blades. I even tore down the soccer ball pattern lightswitch plate.

This is my room, see. My place where I go to write, read comic books, play my guitar, ponder, consider, muse, philosophise. It's also the place where I can hang up my posters, like the ones for all my plays. Or my autographed Public Enemy poster.

You have to look close to see Flava Flav's autograph, but I assure you it's there. I watched him sign it and I shook his hand. But that's another story.

I wrote my last play, I Am Alpha, in this room. Ashley thinks the black walls influenced how it came out. Considering the amount of fake blood and tortured kitty sound effects the production required, she could be right.

The thing is, I was all ready to give up this room. I wasn't thrilled about it, but I was willing. We have a baby on the way, a fact that has not stopped elating me every time I think about it, which is rather often throughout any given day. We were going to turn this room into the kid's room. So then we'd have our bedroom, the kid's room, and the guest room.

Then the other day, Ashley says to me, "We don't need a guest bedroom. You need your office." I wasn't sure what I was hearing, so I asked her to repeat. She said the same thing. She explained to me that she understood how important it was for me to have my own space where I can go and close the door and turn on my music and be creative and do my writing and just have my time. My friend Andy calls this kind of time, "cave time."

The thing is, she was totally right. I love this office, I love having my space, and she understood this so perfectly that she was able to explain it to me better than I could explain it to myself. And when someone does something like that for you, it can really make you feel loved. So now the guest room is going bye-bye and I get to keep my office. Now I know, sure, when we have another kid and when they get old enough to want their own rooms, then I'll have to give up my office, whatever color it may be at the time (the black is actually starting to get a bit old). But right now it's mine.