The Man Cove...

 

 

I live with four women. Joni. Joni's daughter who moved in with us in July. Kylie and Jazmine (age 13 and 12). I'm also on Disability so I don't really have all that much of an escape from these Female antics. Yes, I can take a walk...but my back dictates that I try and heal and not do too much.

 

Four women and we share one very small bathroom. I trip over hair dryers, hair straighteners, curlers, four bottles of face wash, fru fru shampoo bottles (multiple), bottles of conditioner, buckets of nail polish and many other implements of proper female teenage vanity care.

 

We have one television--which is probably unusual in American families these days. What to watch, when we watch is always a negotiation process similar to what the Soviets and the Americans had during the SALT talks. Exemptions: The television is ceded to me at 6 pm every night for Rachel Maddow; NCIS is Joni's Tuesday night must see show. Other than that, it is a negotiation between the Teenagers who have fallen in love with some of the worst television to pollute the airwaves. Jersey Shore. A game show called: Baggage, which is so disgusting, I can't even describe it. The adults have veto power over the TV. The Teenagers pine for a more traditional lifestyle (and their own television).

 

This off grid, simple life inflicted on the two Teenagers with a house of walls of mud and rooms that aren't even close to being finished, is really uncool when you are in that image conscious "gotta fit in with my friends" stage of life. Inviting friends over is rare; at this point, what we have done is just plain bizarre to the Teenagers. "Why can't we have drywall or a NORMAL house!", words I hear often, usually at top volume.

 

Now that it is colder, there is no place for the male of this tribe to get away. Until yesterday. Joni ceded a corner of our Bedroom to be my: Man Cove. It ain't much. But it is a place where I can escape the female talk and problems, retreating to a place of refuge to write and read.