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My Profile
Fairytales for a Practical Princess - 2008-11-30
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10:53 a.m. - 2003-04-06
Hoo Hoo Hoo! Guess who went out yesterday! I was soooo excited to be upright and moving that I totally overdid it, but it was worth it. And now after 6 glorious hours of sleep I'm reasonably refreshed and STILL WALKING!! Can I get a Hallelujah? I am aware that there are still 100 Things to go on my 500 Things. They’ll have to wait. Not quite THAT coherent yet. And I have these damn annoying spangles in my vision. Makes it difficult to type accurately. Please excuse any glaring typos. So yesterday. The ice storm (Spring? What Spring?) put the kibosh on Mike’s plans for yesterday and he agreed to haul my sorry carcass around instead. I had a mile long list of places to go and things to shop for. I was demented to get going and with Wolf in tow (unfortunately), off we went. First stop, the Basset Showroom. We need a couch. Our “newest” couch is 15 years old and pretty much a goner. The others are in even worse shape and not even worth moving. When the time comes we’ll park them on the front lawn and let the curb shoppers take them away. (I feel sorry for whoever drags home the couch that’s stinky from cat pee.) The tattery “newest” couch is getting a new slipcover and will live on the enclosed front porch at the Hobbit House. Hello Tobacco Road. I shall lie to myself and claim it’s Shabby Chic. I did a couple of laps around the showroom. I knew what I didn’t want, but wasn’t sure of what I DID want. Along the way I fell in love with a leather chair. I’m not really one for leather furniture. One, most of it just isn’t my style. Leather furniture tends to be “contemporary” and I’m not a big fan of contemporary. And two, my mother was a legal secretary and law offices have a lot of creaky nail head leather stuff and frankly I don’t need “Visiting Mom at Work” flashbacks every time I go into my living room. But this chair is simply...wow. Yeah, it has nail heads, but where is the perfect universe? So I still needed a sofa and now it had to go with my chair. I flagged down a saleswoman and we got busy. I gave her the lowdown on what I didn’t want. I told her we are hard on our furniture, have a young kid, and are sprawlers. The couch needed to be tough and big enough. If it weren’t just too weird for words, we’d put a BED in the living room, nobody ever sits upright. We lie around on the furniture like walruses. A couch for us needs to have adequate length and needs to be deep enough for my mile wide ass to lie on it sideways. The saleswoman cracked up. She congratulated me for being honest. And for wanting furniture to USE. Too many people buy furniture and then spend years keeping everyone off it. I know that story. A friend of mine from high school wasn’t even allowed in her mother’s living room. The furniture had to be ‘kept nice for company’. Right. Some semi-strangers who come over at Christmas get to sit on the couch, but your own family has to huddle in the basement rec room sitting on milk crates and folding chairs the other 364 days a year. Duh! The saleswoman said since I have some rather specific requirements that perhaps a custom couch would be the way to go. Custom couch? Sure, picking fabric or maybe even cushion styles, but design the whole damn thing? Too cool for words. The custom ordering wasn’t entirely from scratch, but there were several choices about everything. The arms, the legs, the number and shape of the cushions, length, depth, height of the couch overall, along with the fabrics and such. I designed me up a rather boxy and utilitarian sofa, but chose a really luxe fabric with a super contrasting welt. She gave me swatches to take home so I can see how the fabric looks when it’s in the room it’ll live in. This is a good thing. It was gloomy yesterday and the living room at the Hobbit House gets a lot of light. The fabric I picked out is a paisley brocade and paisley can be obnoxious if not carefully chosen. I’m leery about prints anyhow AND there’s the Persian rug to deal with. Too many patterns and it’ll drive me schizo. I’m not one of those who can cheerfully put animal print throw pillows on a floral couch, hang some plaid drapes, plop down a Picasso style rug and call the resulting mess “eclectic”. I’ve seen some mixy rooms like that which work, but I know I can’t pull it off. Nor could I live with it on a daily basis. Gleefully waving the swatches over my head like war scalps, I hustled the guys back into the car and we headed to the mall. Old Navy coughed up the usual clearance rack gems. Wolf is coming off another growth spurt and most of his jeans fit like capris. My mosquito legged son now has some pants which come down past his ankles. The child is absurdly tall and a good 2/3’s of his height is leg. Just like his daddy. I have to custom order Mike’s jeans from Levi’s. The man has a 33” waist, but needs a 38 inch inseam. His jeans look like drinking straw wrappers. Wolf was being a twerp, so no browsing at the Waldenbooks. I did get to make a haul at FYE, though. Since the advent of the DVD video prices have dropped dramatically and I hoovered up a pile. Mike laughed when he saw me staggering up to the counter with a stack of videos taller than my chin and came to my rescue. I bought: “The American President”, “Fiddler on the Roof”, “Bullworth”, “Big Trouble in Little China”, “Tremors”, “Peggy Sue Got Married”, “The Good Bye Girl”, “Saving Grace”, “The Odd Couple”, “Ever After”, “Point Break”, “A Fish Called Wanda”, “Wag The Dog”, and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”. Total? $93.07. Damn, I’m good. Just another Yankee carpetbagger taking advantage of a crumbling empire. Or in this case, a waning technology. Came home, dropped off the booty and the cranky kid, and set out with Mike again. Destination: Sam’s Club. There I met my Waterloo. I had pushed too hard for too long and humiliated myself by going face first into a bin of melons. Well, at least I didn’t puke on them. Mike maneuvered me over to a seat in the snack bar, finished the shopping, and got me home with dispatch. He started to give me Crip Wife lecture #43- “Thou Shall Not Literally Shop Until Thou Drops”, but cut it short when he saw how tired I was. He settled for a few mild tsks and snorting when I said something about going out again tomorrow (today). So yeah, my checkbook gets today off and I’ve semi-learned my lesson about overdoing it. But I had fun yesterday and I have some terrific videos to watch while I recuperate. Mending and spending, ~LA
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