Pull Up A Chair

This morning, I saw an official looking political bumper sticker, all red, white and blue and with stars. It said "Republicans for Voldemort". It took me a few seconds to get it.

I needed a new desk chair. Seriously. You may THINK you need a new desk chair as much as I needed a new desk chair, but you would be WRONG. This desk chair could have gone into the Smithsonian Museum as the desk chair which has been occupied by a human bottom for the longest consecutive number of years. I believe we bought this desk chair to use with our brand new APPLE IIe COMPUTER and to coordinate with our lovely, matching plaid Herculon couch, love seat and matching chair, complete with ottoman. That we got the first year we were married. We have been married 31 years. I'm not saying the chair is that old, but close. It has been moved to three houses. It has seen some wear and tear and it shows it. Literally, in places.

The seat has been so smushed down over the years, it's almost flat and there is some sort of spring that sticks up on the left side and causes my left buttock extreme annoyance. I have to put a pillow in the seat to be the slightest bit comfortable.

So we went to buy a new office chair. Actually, I had done some office chair shopping previously and, not to sound all cheap or anything, but OMG $300 for a desk chair, $200 for a desk chair, what are they? Covered in gold? And I realize I just completely dated myself there and sounded JUST LIKE MY MOTHER and you better believe that scares me just a little. We decided to buy the gold-covered $200 desk chair and, after visiting two office supply stores because the first store sold us the wrong chair which we discovered when it was mysteriously $100 less than it was supposed to be. Being the honest people that we are and afraid at some point they might notice they were selling a $200 chair for $100, we pointed out the mistake and eventually got the correct chair home.


I had the deluded idea that the chair would pop out in two pieces - the top and the bottom, we would snap it together and be good to go! Uh. No. It actually came out in 6,871 pieces and I was a little intimidated. Not Tom. He immediately went to get his POWER SCREW DRIVER and I think he might have been saying "more power!" under his breath. Just a little. (and when I went to link that comment to the old "Home Improvement" show, I came up with a very active site that consists of information for fans of this show. A show that went off the air in 1999. Seriously. Do these people HAVE a life?)

This amount and variety of sizes in screw types quite simply terrifies me.

He put it together in two shakes of a lamb's tail or, in this case, two shakes of some sort of polyester, fake suede fabric, and I was good to go.

I shoved the old chair out the way, pushed my new one up to my desk, sat down and began to blog like a maniac. And then I realized I had a problem. My new, cushy, fabulous chair was too fat for my desk. With my arm on the armrest, my hand was too far above the mouse. My shoulder and arm began to ache almost immediately.

No problem. I was not giving up my fabulous chair. I shoved my monitor back, took the keyboard and mouse off the slide-out tray and put them right up on the desk. Aaaahhhh. Just right. I'm sitting in my chair right now. Right this very minute. And my left buttock is thanking me. Not in words. Because that would be just not right. But it's more like telepathy. Buttock telepathy. I'm stopping now.

Here's my chair. Isn't it FABULOUS?

Check out out my new Herald-Leader blog post today at: On the Patio at The Bistro at Joseph-Beth and enter to win free gift certificates!