Hades (center), flanked by Pain and Panic

As elevating and inspiring as #dmmh was, reality is always around the corner, as predictable as a cast-iron frying pan in a Katzenjammer Kids cartoon. So on Tuesday, Mr S and I went to IKEA to re-vamp the Young Mr’s bedroom.

I know: this isn’t Martha Stewart, so what gives?

The Young Mr turns 16 on Saturday, and we wanted to mark the day in a memorable way. We had originally planned to go to Liberty Hall in NJ, where we would present the kid with his own Charleville and a Wegman’s white cake. Reality intervened in the form of AP European History, which led to dropping the swim team, which has their first  meet on Sunday. We dropped Liberty Hall, expecting to be swimming, but we’ve had to drop swimming to manage AP Euro.

So this has been a Very Tough Week chez Calash, and last Tuesday, the Young Mr slipped into the kind of Serious Funk that only teenagers can have. Reader, it was so bad, I asked him if he wanted to see his therapist and he said, “Yeah, OK. I guess.”

So, appointment on the horizon, we cast about the house looking for places in which one could do homework. Reader, there were few, and mostly they were places where I already sew or write. Something had to be done!

The Young Mr Surveys his Territory

IKEA catalog at the ready, my friend and I developed a plan: we would transform the Young Mr’s room for his birthday: He would get a desk, and place to lounge whilst reading, and I would get my table back.

We still have some tweaking to do, but he has a desk, a bench, and a watercolor of the Morgan that he loves (that once was mine) and loft bed that he seems to like.

Since the photo was taken, all free space has been claimed by textbooks and Magic cards, and I suppose the underneath spaces will soon be colonized by feral socks. Still, in the interim between this moment and Sometime Thursday Afternoon, the Young Mr has a nice room that makes him, and us, and his grandmother, feel that Things Might Be OK. I hope you have a cozy corner in your home where Things Are OK for you– and if you don’t, I hope you will  make one, soon.

The back of the top rail of Hades.

Oh, and Hades? That’s an 1813 chair we found in James Woods’s booth at the local antique mall. He’s from here, so no big. We figure the other two are his henchmen from Hercules. The names seemed appropriate to their relative comfort levels for long-term seating.