The Family That Sits Together Stays Together

There is very little to report, but it's been so long since I updated this, I decided I'd go ahead and write about the little things that have happened lately.

Instead of writing about finally hitting bottom on the depression scale and Tom, my dad and my doctor deciding perhaps a short stint in a happy hospital would be in order - I'll tell you about my furniture shopping experience that happened recently. (Don't worry, I'm working on the other thing.)

I've been very unhappy with my living room furniture for sometime now. With my horrible dust mite allergies, I can only have leather furniture. So, what I have is a brown leather couch and I HAD two black leather recliners. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but something in one of the recliners snapped. When you would sit in the chair your feet would pop up off the floor and you'd go backwards - not falling all the way over - but just enough that you felt like a turtle that has flipped over on his back. You're sitting there kicking your feet and waving your arms like you're swimming and praying the back of your head doesn't hit the floor behind you.

Needless to say, we had to cut that chair loose and we got a new one. A brown recliner. I THOUGHT it was the same color brown as the couch. It was not. So...I now have three pieces of leather furniture in my living room and none of them match. This displeases me greatly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there are starving children in Morocco who would kill to have non matching leather furniture. Go ahead and say it... you think I'm spoiled. Well, I am not! It's time for new furniture! Remember what happened to the one black recliner? It has now happened to the other one. I don't want to put up a sign that says: sit here at your own risk!

I tell Tom I want a leather sectional - it will be perfect for the family room and it's more seating. Tom, being a man, can't see why I would want new furniture, but he begrudgingly agrees. Besides I explained - a sectional will bring the family closer. What? It can too!

We decide to do our furniture shopping on a day the kids are in school, so we don't have to listen to them whine. We picked last Friday and Tom schedules that day off from work. A good mom would have known that last Friday was a teacher in service day. I am not a good mom. Ok, kids will go with us. We wake up Friday morning to see a most lovely snow storm starting. I don't care! I'm going to buy my sectional! No kids or giant snow storm will get in my way! And off we go. The first store I find the one I want. Yayyy! Tom, though, says no - we should price shop. Drat.

Fine! Back out into the snow storm we go and we hit every furniture store we could find (two were closed due to the storm.) Night comes and I still haven't found a sectional I liked better than the first one. Ok, Tom says tomorrow we go back and get it. Yayyy! Saturday morning and everyone and their great grandmother are furniture shopping. Crowds make me VERY grumpy. Back to the first store we went to yesterday and Tom starts bartering the price and gets them down one hundred dollars. Yay! No. There was another one that looked a lot like the one at the first store but it was cheaper somewhere else. We need to go back to that store AND hit the stores that were closed due to snow storm the day before.

The kids and I are tired, cranky and we LOVE the first sectional! Fine, says Tom. And we head back to the first store (for the third time) to finally buy our sectional. We sit in it. I'm smiling as are the kids when Tom says the following words: "I think it's too big and it won't fit in the family room." Talking through clinched teeth I explain that it will fit.

"We'll go home and measure and if it will fit, I'll come back and buy it - you won't even have to come with me" begs Tom.

"NO, NO, NO" STOMPS FEET "IT WILL FIT BUY IT NOW" I casually request.

We went back and forth like this until the salesperson was nice and uncomfortable. I finally agree and we go home to measure.

I'm not going to tell you how it ends, because I hate that Tom was right. Also, I'm no longer speaking to him. He seems ok with this.