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Jun. 26th, 2004 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrian_turtleI've lived in this apartment for well over a year. That means it's probably time for me to unpack the stuff that's supposed to hang on the walls, and actually hang it on the walls. (The books were all unpacked less than 3 weeks after I moved, which may be more remarkable considering that most of my shelves were not acquired until 2 weeks after the move.) Once I felt sufficiently at home here, after about 3 weeks of assorted settling-in activities, I didn't want to bother with any more unpacking or decorating chores.
Looking through the picture stash, I realize that I don't really want to fill my living room with nicely framed diplomas and work-related awards. I have too many of them. I know it's not really possible to have too many work-related awards. Though I always had seriously mixed feelings about so much of the space shuttle's carrying capacity being devoted to that kind of tat, it was still awfully nice to get a gee-whiz-this-was-in-orbit! thanks tokens. It feels like it would be inappropriate to throw then away, or pack them in boxes and forget all about them. The person to whom I was married when I worked on the NASA project said, "This is so cool! We should frame all this so it looks great, and hang it on the wall!" And so we did. But as I move further from the project, my enthusiasm fades. When I was living with people who framed their diplomas (each in the appropriate school colors) and put them on the walls of the shared office, there was a place for me to hang all this NASA stuff that felt right...not pretentious or boastful or work-obsessed.
Now? I don't have an office, or need one. My laptop is on a little desk in a corner of my living room. A big picture on the wall 18" in front of my nose risks overwhelming everything I do here. (That's one reason the calender went on the wall to the side. I don't need time pressure in my face, thank you very much.) If I want to put all the work awards together, they would have to go on the main wall of the living room, across from the big couch, or over the kitchen table. I'm not crazy about the idea of giving them that kind of emphasis.
I like the image of a baby otter in its parent's (*) arms. I'm not sure how many such images are really appropriate in a contentedly childless household like this. (Er, the child is welcome to visit, with or without her parents. I mean that I am a contented non-parent who is slightly wary of overloading my space with parenting symbolism.) But there's a tendency for people to see one cool image I have, and say of something similar, "That looks like something Adrian would like," so there's a gradual accretion.
(*) I know that most people see the standard picture as mother and baby otters. I have 3 stuffed toy otters. Two of them came as a set (from the Monterey Aquarium), and the big one has velcro on its paws, so it attaches securely to the velcro patches on the little one. The other big otter is a slightly different color and shape, and has no velcro, but is clearly a member of the family. When the small child I used to live with was almost 3, she asked me if the big otter with the velcro was a mama otter or a daddy otter. I said I didn't know. I explained that both mamas and daddys (and sometimes other adults) take care of babies, and sometimes it was hard to tell if someone was male or female without being told. And I didn't speak the otter language. She calls the toys "baby otter," "big otter," and "the other big otter."
Looking through the picture stash, I realize that I don't really want to fill my living room with nicely framed diplomas and work-related awards. I have too many of them. I know it's not really possible to have too many work-related awards. Though I always had seriously mixed feelings about so much of the space shuttle's carrying capacity being devoted to that kind of tat, it was still awfully nice to get a gee-whiz-this-was-in-orbit! thanks tokens. It feels like it would be inappropriate to throw then away, or pack them in boxes and forget all about them. The person to whom I was married when I worked on the NASA project said, "This is so cool! We should frame all this so it looks great, and hang it on the wall!" And so we did. But as I move further from the project, my enthusiasm fades. When I was living with people who framed their diplomas (each in the appropriate school colors) and put them on the walls of the shared office, there was a place for me to hang all this NASA stuff that felt right...not pretentious or boastful or work-obsessed.
Now? I don't have an office, or need one. My laptop is on a little desk in a corner of my living room. A big picture on the wall 18" in front of my nose risks overwhelming everything I do here. (That's one reason the calender went on the wall to the side. I don't need time pressure in my face, thank you very much.) If I want to put all the work awards together, they would have to go on the main wall of the living room, across from the big couch, or over the kitchen table. I'm not crazy about the idea of giving them that kind of emphasis.
I like the image of a baby otter in its parent's (*) arms. I'm not sure how many such images are really appropriate in a contentedly childless household like this. (Er, the child is welcome to visit, with or without her parents. I mean that I am a contented non-parent who is slightly wary of overloading my space with parenting symbolism.) But there's a tendency for people to see one cool image I have, and say of something similar, "That looks like something Adrian would like," so there's a gradual accretion.
(*) I know that most people see the standard picture as mother and baby otters. I have 3 stuffed toy otters. Two of them came as a set (from the Monterey Aquarium), and the big one has velcro on its paws, so it attaches securely to the velcro patches on the little one. The other big otter is a slightly different color and shape, and has no velcro, but is clearly a member of the family. When the small child I used to live with was almost 3, she asked me if the big otter with the velcro was a mama otter or a daddy otter. I said I didn't know. I explained that both mamas and daddys (and sometimes other adults) take care of babies, and sometimes it was hard to tell if someone was male or female without being told. And I didn't speak the otter language. She calls the toys "baby otter," "big otter," and "the other big otter."
