My husband, Jeff Lynch, got it at his bachelor party, a week before our Aug. 27 wedding. Clad in a Hawaiian shirt and dumb expression, the foot-tall amphibian holds - of all things - a wine glass.
For days, I gave it the stink-eye in passing. Surely he set it there temporarily, I thought. But when "temporarily" in my mind became "until acted upon by an outside force," it was time for Froggy to take a flying leap. Luckily, I didn't have to rely on an untimely "accident," a la the leg lamp in A Christmas Story.
This is our idea of marriage insurance: rooms of our own where we do as we please. The other has no say in our decorating choices, like his four-bottle liquor dispenser or my pink heart-shaped mirror.
In the Man Room, things are removed over time. There's always a way to make something more efficient, and this leads to never-ending consolidation. "My ideal room would be a circle with a chair in the middle and screens all around," explains my left-brained, software developer husband. "Everything I needed would be built in at my fingertips. The chair would, of course, have a built-in cooler, programmed remote and a heater for the winter. I could then do my work, watch football and eat at the same time."
See, Jeff shares his Man Room with his Man Dog, Buddy. All right, so maybe our 9-week-old golden retriever isn't exactly a Man. But Obi Wan is training him well. They drink dark beer, watch Cops on TV and listen to Brother Wease in the morning.
Jeff originally wanted to paint the room "Ford Blue," the color of the car maker's emblem, he explained. Apparently, Martha Stewart doesn't make Ford Blue. So he went with a somewhat-less-intense steel blue, which immediately became more intense once he painted the moldings a lethally bright white.
The white accordion shades were chosen not only for their ability to match the white moldings (a decision he spent a half-second thinking about) but for their military-grade sun blocking abilities, to keep the glare off his computer.
"The shot glasses are just a reminder of fun getaways I've been on over the years," he says. "They're from all over ... Florida, New Orleans, Mexico and the Caribbean."
That's understandable. But why, in choosing items for the shelves - the only designated display space in the room - did you choose to showcase the froggy wine-glass holder, a baseball cap and the coup de grace - a fat, black folder?
"Those shelves are so small I just put things there that didn't have another home," he explains. "The frog is my pal. I got it from my best man, Eric, for our wedding."
For this, I blame my love of stuff. And the fact that it's only 10 square feet. Still, the more stuff you have, the more there is to keep track of. Despite my best efforts, I never get it organized. I'm too busy acquiring and managing more stuff: cigarette ads from vintage magazines, fascinating books about the human spleen, a very important piece of velvet for ... something, and ribbons from every present I've received. On it goes till it piles up in boxes.
Out of sheer embarrassment and a sincere desire to actually see the room, I hid the boxes in the closet and basement. So the photo shows the room as I'd like it to be: still packed with visual and mental stimulation, but not the Library of Congress-meets-Lisa's Craft Palace-meets-Sanford & Son. In the photo, I might add, you're not seeing another floor-to-ceiling shelving unit packed with boxes, immediately to the right as you walk in the room. Or the five others I know I'll have lining the room's perimeter.
Good. Because the dog gets the Man Room. And my pwecious wittle kitty, Oliver, gets the Girl Room. He sleeps by the window on a perch I've created. It's actually another cabinet for my hoarding. The blanket on the top isn't fooling anyone.
I also seem to be good at collecting colors. My current palette for the room includes eight: purple, gold, orange, pink, red, beige, black and brown.
In a way, it looks like Barbie did, too. At least when it comes to the heart-shaped mirror. Decoupaged with phrases like "You glow, girl!" it's a pink violation of all things Man.
I hung it on our bedroom door - the door to our neutral blue, gold and brown Land of Compromise. Clearly a violation of the treaty, it finally had to move next door.
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