the changeling

We’ve been planning to buy a new sofa since we bought the country house.  Well, maybe not ever since we bought the country house, but at least since I started looking around and pointing at things and saying...that’s staying; that’s staying; nope, not taking that.  The love seat was on the top of the list.  It is so old, has broken springs and a tear in the back where they poked through.  Um, maybe I shouldn’t be revealing how tacky we are.

We also thought, as long as we were at it, we’d get another recliner.  I got it in my mind that I wanted a leather sofa and/or recliner.  I’d been to people’s homes that had leather furniture and it was always so dreamy to sit in.  Unfortunately I have leather tastes on a polyester budget.  We did actually find several leather sofas that we could afford but either the cushions were hard or the seat was so high my feet didn’t touch the ground.  Call me silly, but I want my feet to touch the ground when I sit on a sofa.

Last December we had a little extra money.  What that means is that we got paid for a job and hadn’t paid any of our bills yet, so we decided to go sofa shopping.  We like to support the businesses in the country but we quickly determined that we couldn’t afford anything we liked at the furniture store here in Wharton (pop. under 10,000) so we drove to El Campo (pop. about 20,000) which is about 20 miles down the road.  Sofa shopping with me means sitting on every sofa we like the looks of to determine comfort.  Some are too high, some are too deep, some are too hard, some, the cushions are shaped weird.  We winnowed it down to a couple of sofas, one of which was a sage green micro-fiber double recliner but weren’t ready to commit ourselves.  After all, we had just started looking and planned to head toward Houston the next day to look some more.  Only we didn’t and our window of opportunity slammed shut with the plummeting economy.

Nine months later I’m ready to start unpacking some of our stuff but I don’t want to until I know where the furniture is going to go and that means getting the sofa.  So last week we went to a pretty cool quality resale shop and looked to see what they had.  They had a couple of nice leather sofas which we still could not afford so yesterday we went back to El Campo and tried out all the sofas and lo and behold, there was the same sage green micro-fiber double recliner that we had considered last year and it was $100 less.  We took this for a sign and bought it.  They put it in the truck and off we went.

I hate buying big ticket items.  I always suffer buyer’s remorse because the grass is always greener...right?  I always get over it, I remind myself of all the things I like about it, I get used to the new thing but it takes me awhile to convince myself that this was right.  And that’s because, it takes me a long time to make up my mind.  I want to see and consider every possible alternative first which is fine if there is a finite number of choices.  But with things like houses and sofas, there is always something new being offered a few months later.  Not Husband.  He is more of an impulse buyer...I like it, let’s get it...and he never again thinks about how much it cost.

So we get the sofa home.  I actually prefer a more tailored look but this one was just so comfortable and apparently, comfort is higher on my list than looks.  

This is the color it was in the store.

This is the color it is in our house.

This is not the same color.  

“It’s the curse”, he says.

“It’s not the curse!” I exclaim.  

Although, after all these years, I’m beginning to think he may be right.