Friday, December 11, 2015

Yay, Seating

For most of you reading this, the next sentence will seem pretty mundane, even shrug-worthy.

I own a sofa.

I know, big deal, right? I'm a middle-class American. If I don't even have a sofa to my name, I must be some kind of neo-maxi-zoom-dweebie.

Sorry, I should have tossed out a
Judd Nelson warning.
Guilty as charged, I guess. Precocious Daughter and I have been in our apartment for a little over two months, and until 3:00 this afternoon we didn't have a sofa. There were two at our old house. One of them was completely worn out and ended up at the curb. The other was a loveseat that my almost-ex and I bought the year we got married. He took that, along with 90% of the contents of the house. Which was fine with me. My goal was to move out with little to nothing that reminded me of him or our marriage. I mostly succeeded, with the exception of PDaughter, of course. But I'm not sure the city would have taken her if I'd left her at the curb. It's worked out OK.

As if I could have lived with this on my conscience.
Anyway, we've been looking for a sofa for a while. We had a budget, a color, and a style in mind; all we had to do was find a piece that met all three. And so began a two-month search.

We fell in love with a sofa from IKEA, where we've already purchased our dining set. Assembly? No problem for these women! With an electric screwdriver and endless tolerance for giggle-fueled delays, we slayed the flat-pack dragon in style.

Ultimately, however, we were faced with the reality that hauling home an entire sofa (in multiple boxes) would require either borrowing or renting a truck. And while that wasn't a deal-breaker, it was enough to send us out to other stores in search of a fully-assembled piece that included delivery service.

We found it, ironically, because of my almost-ex. He and PDaughter sometimes go to the movies on their weekends together, and the closest movie theater is at a mall about 10 minutes from his place. On the outskirts of that mall is a furniture store that caught PDaughter's eye because of the eclectic mix of merchandise on display in the windows. So when I suggested last Friday that we combine our weekly meal out with some other activity to "make an evening of it," she suggested checking out this particular store. I thought it was an amazing idea, and off we went.

The name of the store is Xoom, and if you're in the Dallas area, it's on Preston Road, just outside Valley View Mall. It's pretty unassuming, and yeah, it's a wee bit sketchy...but go in anyway. Break out of that Walmart/Target mold and shop local. Totally worth it.

Xoom was packed with a variety of interesting, eclectic, and *expensive* pieces. I fell in love with an amazing, two-piece, pink and purple sofa that was over $3,000. Just a tad over budget, not to mention way too large for my little apartment. But here's the thing. Mo, the charming and attentive proprietor, let us know that if we didn't see anything in the showroom that worked for us, he had catalogs from several major furniture wholesalers, and we could order anything we wanted, and he was willing to "work on" pricing. That's the benefit of being part of the Arab-American Mafia, I guess? Not saying, but the parade of colorful characters coming in and out of the store while we were there was at least as entertaining as any of the items on display. Yeah.

It was PDaughter who found a completely perfect apartment-scaled sectional in one of those catalogs. We loved it. Mo quoted an entirely reasonable price. We bought it. WHAAAAAT? Would we really be able to ditch the (gratefully) borrowed chairs currently in our living room in favor of a comfortable, versatile, and utterly grown-up sectional?

YES. Don't quite understand how, but YES.

Shown here: bliss.
Two very nice Hispanic gentlemen in an almost completely non-sketchy delivery truck brought me my sectional in two really large boxes. Working only 15 minutes from home (non-fucked-up DFW rush-hour time) has its advantages. I met them at my freight elevator, and they uncrated my sectional, screwed in the furniture's feet, and best of all, carted off all the cardboard boxes. Voila, I had a supremely gorgeous sectional, and all I had to do was nudge it into place with my leg.

I immediately took a photo and texted it to PDaughter. I'm her mom; if I can't disrupt her education with photos of living room furniture, then I'm moving to Canada, where that sort of thing is required by Parliament.

Since arriving home, we both have declared our sofa to be gorgeous, comfortable, and perfect for our little home. Tonight we watched TV together, both of us sprawled comfortably on either end of our gorgeous new piece of furniture. So wonderfully normal. I highly recommend normal, at least a slice of it, in everybody's life.

Never forget...if it's what you know, it's normal. As far as anyone else knows.


4 comments:

  1. It's always the little things that make life so wonderful, isn't it? I'm glad you and PD got the sofa, and are working so diligently to make your corner of the world You.

    It truly is a lovely piece!

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  2. Little things do make life wonderful but this is one of those big things that makes life wonderful. I can't imagine how much you needed this but given all that you've been through lately I'm so happy it happened.
    And you bought locally. That's the cherry on top.

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  3. Just had a vision of all the Simpsons piling on the couch. Only it was you and PD. Still good.

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  4. Did you at least roll over and over on it, moaning, orgiastically, "Mine Mine Mine!"???

    ReplyDelete

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