As an adult I have purchased a washer and dryer, a lawnmower, a car (twice!), and a house. I have never purchased a couch. Couches have always been hand-me-downs. The couch we had in our first apartment was a cast off of Mom's when she decided she wanted something different in the living room. That couch followed us from Chickasha to Stillwater. After that we got Randy and Katrina's big red couch and that was our couch until we moved in with Chris's mom. We didn't need a couch then because she already had two couches. When we moved to KCMO we sat on the air mattress for a month before hauling Traci's old leather couch up here. Traci's old couch (I do not mean to offend you Traci) was a monster couch. It was big and bulky. It made squeaky noises and the cushions would often try to eat you. That couch was always left out of the picture whenever we discussed the living room make-over, but couches are expensive. Unless you pick it up off the curb, which is basically what I've been doing since 1998. It was time to break that cycle. Yet it still wasn't my intention when I woke up Saturday morning to go out and buy a new couch. Big purchases make my stomach hurt. But as I read through all my email ads that morning I noticed that World Market was/is having a big furniture sale and I had just received a 15% off anything coupon from them for my birthday. So...I bought a couch and the $277.45 I actually spent on the couch made my stomach less hurty.

My family being here also made it possible to buy the new couch. The couch came in a box that would not have fit in my car and only just barely fit in Mom's vehicle. Then there was some assembly required. The guy at the store said the assembly was just a matter of attaching the feet. Randy and I looked at the box that was not shaped at all like a couch and blindly nodded "riiiggghttt" at the guy. No..."some assembly" in this case stood for "build your own damn couch". Well actually it translated to "Randy, build your sister's damn couch", 'cause he put the couch together with tools that he despised. Apparently he wanted some kind of wrench thingy that I didn't seem to have. He kept mumbling angrily about it under his breath. He couldn't believe that I didn't have one and asked me how I was able to get my lawn mower apart without it. I told him I used my teeth. He told me the he knew what I was getting for Christmas. Except it sounded more like a threat. Any way, I wouldn't have a couch I could actually sit on if he hadn't decided to be the only boy at a mostly girl party.

I spent most of Sunday lounging around on my new couch. I think we're going to be real good friends. And I'm almost done with the living room. I'm down to window treatments and figuring out what to put on the TV wall (if anything). I may need to lay on my new couch and stare at that wall some more. I'm just going to say "new couch" twenty more times. New couch!