A place to call my own please!

Every Friday I watch a TV-show called ”The Living Room”. It is a one-hour show led by Amanda who has the gift of gab and with her in her sofa she has Barry – an attractive DIY-pro (”do-it-yourself” that means, it is very popular to do everything in your home by yourself), Dr Chris – a handsome vet and my celebrity crush and Miguel – a hot, Spanish chef. Sometimes they have a hot doctor on the show as well but that is totally irrelevant to what I want to talk about today. I want to direct my attention to Barry the Handy Man. On every show, he is helping couples or families to fix their home and often he is fixing a so called ”man cave” where the husband can withdraw and have his things the way he wants. Wikipedia defines it as ”A man cave (also sometimes called "mantuary") is a male sanctuary, such as a specially equipped garage, spare bedroom, media room, den, or basement”. In Australia, you can sometimes find a guesthouse or a separate apartment with a house and this is referred to as a ”granny flat”. I am not going to get all feminist about the different naming of the areas; in America they call a sleeveless shirt a ”wife beater” which is not a very flattering name either.

The high-light of my TV-week, courtesy of Channel 10.

Back to my topic: the Man Cave. Why do only men need a place of their own? I would very much like to have a place of my own – preferably away from our house, where I can keep my things and I don’t have to share with anybody and even better, where I don’t have to pick up after anyone but myself. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t want to escape my family on a permanent basis – only every now and then. In the ten minutes this has taken me to write, I’ve had two visits from my husband and one from eldest daughter – the latter informing me that she will be joining me in a little while. She is teasing her sister as I write this and I can hear that there are some upset feelings being displayed. With my personal space – let us call it ”Lady Retreat” I would not only get some peace and quiet, I wouldn’t have to get irritated over having to pick up after the others. I could keep most of my clothes, shoes and accessories there. My daughters have the same shoe size as me and often they take my shoes and I am currently deprived of all my casual shoes like runners, sneakers and hiking shoes – leaving me only my Easytones from Reebok (eldest just opened the door again and asked what I was doing). Very often, our bedroom serves as the girls’ hang out, they make their music videos in there and use our bed as acrobatic mattress and trampoline. My closet is used as their dress-up room and my clothes as their outfits for their videos.

On the door into my closet

I could probably elaborate my dream of a ”Lady Retreat” even further but with the daughters dancing and jumping upstairs – the agitated screams are replaced by high-pitch laughter – I cannot really concentrate. It is Sunday evening and tomorrow is a normal day with girls in school and husband at work and I am all alone at home. That’ll do as ”Lady Retreat”, that’ll do...