Knick-Knacks

I have held back on what I’m about to confess for fear of offending just about every other woman in America: I hate knick-knacks. Now, I do not hate them in your house. You can have them on every available surface and I’ll never say a word. I hate them in MY house. I hate moving them, dusting them, looking at them.*
I like my decorative items to be functional as well as pretty. Vases, fine. Bowls (preferably food-safe so they can double as serving bowls), great. Candlesticks, picture frames, little boxes that hold stuff, wonderful. Porcelain shepherdess, no. Crystal unicorn, no no no. My knick-knack collection consists of three Willow Tree figures that double as book ends.
Nate, however, does not share my horror of bric-a-brac. He tries to be accommodating, but occasionally our differences come to the surface.
This week we were attempting to get our guest room a little more guest-friendly. We took down a hideous and dilapidated bookshelf. I thought that was a good thing. I forgot that up on the top of that shelf, where I could barely see them, was Nate’s stash of knick-knacks. A word here about Nate’s knick-knacks: they are random, masculine, and ugly. They make a useless porcelain shepherdess seem fetching. The day he decided to display his preserved head of a baby alligator on his desk at church, instead of the guest room, was a happy day. His collection also includes a fake pile of dog poo.
So, while I’m grocery shopping, Nate is in the guest room, busy moving books and movies, when he decides to do something with his now homeless knick-knacks.
His solution? He strew them across the dresser and tv. When I came home I found the dresser – and I already dislike that there is a tv, dvd player, playstation, and an over-sized vase of flowers on it- now sported a wooden alligator figurine, a quartz alligator figurine, a minature Florida Gator football helmet, (notice a theme?) a picture of Suzy and her cousins at Christmas (which wouldn’t be bad at all, except they were all crying) a picture of his grandparents (fine) a brass thermometer, a boomerang, a signed baseball, a very small, wooden Chinese incense ball, three flat rocks, and the crowning glory- a Russian nesting doll of Boris Yeltsein. It had the added charm of opening up to reveal all the previous Soviet leaders back to Lenin.
Needless to say, I was appalled.
When I realized that we would never come to an agreement as to the attractiveness of such a display, I pointed out that our pre-school houseguests this week would probably destroy them. So Nate put them in a drawer, to be brought out at the appropriate time. I hope that time is not when my sister comes to visit next week, or anybody else for that matter.
All this is just the lead-up to this morning while making my bed, I noticed a Willow Tree figure had been moved from it’s post as bookend, and replaced with an exact minature replica of Minis Tirith. If you don’t know what that is, it looks like this:


Isn’t it lovely?
But the tops, the absolute tops was picture frame. Yesterday Nate had taken a frame with one of our engagement pictures off of the dresser and said he was going to put in on his desk at church. Isn’t that the sweetest thing? Wouldn’t you feel all sunshine and lollipops inside if your husband did that? I was touched. Until this morning, when I saw that the engagement picture, which had previously been right next to the alarm clock (thus the first thing he’d see in the morning) had been replaced with an autographed picture of Steve Spurrier. This is Steve Spurrier:

Yes, Steve Spurrier, Heisman trophy-winning quarterback of the Florida Gators and former National Championship winning coach of the same, has now usurped my place of honor.
I hate knick-knacks.


*This is excepting Christmas decorations and decorative crosses.