The thing about working when your husband is retired is that you often get news from home via the phone. Every day Hubby keeps me fully informed with regular updates from the home front. My phone rings off and on with news that, “Mama passed her kidney stone” or “We’re on our way to the emergency room with Daddy” and the ever popular, “The dog threw up in the middle of the bed again.” It removes me a tad from the chaos since I can usually only offer a thought, opinion or word of encouragement, hang up and leave them to deal with the immediate emergency. That’s not always a bad thing.
Since we started this house remodeling/purchase/moving mess my phone rings off the wall. The first remodeling project began his morning. First up? Scraping the popcorn finish off the ceilings. It seems we’re not the only ones who hate that popcorn stuff, since several folks have expressed an interest in how successful we are in getting rid of it. I’ll post more about it later, but let’s just say within two hours of them beginning Hubby called with the news that, “Holy *@#$! That mess is everywhere!!”
In the last two weeks he’s called me several times ranting and raving about sky high estimates on flooring and bathroom installations, and the difficulty in finding a good carpenter, and I’ve managed to listen sympathetically, knowing that it would eventually work out, and we would find the right product and the right person at the right price. The call that struck fear in my heart, however, came Saturday. I was cleaning the pool and I picked up the phone to hear him on the other end with the dreaded words, “I found the chair.”
“The chair?”
“THE chair!”
“Oh. THE chair.”
“Wait ‘til you see it.”
Feebly, “I can hardly wait.”
From the very beginning of this project Hubby has said I can do whatever I want with the interior decorating as long as it fits within our budget and that he wants a say in only three things: the mattress, the toilet and his recliner for the living room. Now, don’t get me wrong. I think those are areas where his opinion is important. We haven’t gotten to the mattress yet, but I let him pick the toilet on his own. After all, he spends more time on it than I do, and he’s a big guy with long legs. Off the shelf of Lowes, after much thought and comparison, he chose the Grand Champion model that allegedly has the power to flush a bucket of golf balls. Fine. I’ll learn how to dangle my fanny over that big oval bowl in a way that keeps me from falling in.
And I was willing to keep my mouth shut about the chair. He’s a recliner guy, and his chair is very important to him. It’s the other seat he spends a lot of time on. But then I went to a furniture store with him and discovered that his taste in furniture is nothing close to mine. I like classic styles with simple lines. He likes..well…let’s just say he likes the stuff you found in the Florida condos you rented in the 1980’s. Our first visit to a furniture store had him pointing at numerous sofas and dining room tables with a big, “What about THIS?!” and me wrinkling my nose and trying to find ways to get him to the car. He picked one chair that had me quivering over its faux leather upholstery. Picture the scene in
A Christmas Story where Ralphie’s dad wants to put his leg lamp in the window and Ralphie’s mom is nervously saying, “I don’t know.” That was us. Miles apart in our tastes we are. I’ve decided that if the preacher had plopped us down in the middle of a furniture store with a small budget prior to our wedding nineteen years ago and told us to negotiate the purchase of six large pieces of furniture we would have never made it down the aisle. Heck, we would have never made it out of the store alive. So you can see why I was more than a little concerned when he called me to tell me about THE chair.
When we got to the store I was somewhat surprised by the style. It’s okay. Not exactly what I had in mind, but it will do. HOWEVER, it is huge. Really huge. From this post forward it shall be referred to as the Big Ass Chair (BAC for short). You can see why.
My feet did not touch the floor when I sat in it. I looked like Edith Ann from
Laugh-In, and I wasn’t stout enough to make it recline. Hubby had to push it back. It’s not really a recliner; it’s a twin bed for the living room. It is the mother of all recliners. It’s truly a man’s chair. And his heart is set on it. And I want him to be happy. So I will go along with his choice. And I will try to figure out how to make that red sofa-loveseat combo I have my heart set on work with that thing. All I can say is thank goodness no one will see the mattress we pick out. Oh, and remind me to tell you one day about the round dining room table he picked out because it would be great to play poker around with the boys. Aye, yi, yi.
It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that our dog likes to lay in the sunshine and bark at the UPS man.
He parked his backside in it before the delivery guys' hands were off the smooth, soft microfiber.
There was oohing and ahhing and, "Hey, check this out!" as he lovingly tested the chair like Ralphie fondled the leg lamp in A Christmas Story. And just like Ralphie, he snuggled up with his Red Ryder chair and drifted off to a place where little boys' dreams come true. 
