Longtime readers–by which I mean anybody here since Monday–may remember that I cleaned the closet in order to move out the clothes in order to put the rack in the other closet in order to make space for a reading chair because GODDAMNIT I DESERVE A READING CHAIR.

Today, I went out looking for a reading chair.

I had two criteria–it must be comfy, preferably overstuffed, of the variety that I can put my feet up and turn sideways and curl up with a book. And it must be cheap.

My planwas to visit the furniture strip in Raleigh, looking for the places that do the custom fabric orders, and find something in the clearance aisle that somebody had ordered in a godawful color and then never picked up. There’s always one. Shocking pink, lime green, violent turquoise…I’ll take it. Being a raging chromaphile has its advantages, even if you can drive me back, hissing, by mentioning "beige" or "taupe."

So my ideal scenario was that somebody had ordered an overstuffed puce chair and never picked it up and the warehouse was desperate to get it off their hands. Off I went.

Luck was with me. The tag said, somewhat optimistically, "burgandy," but it’s brick red, with a hint of burnt salmon in the wrong light. It is not a great color. And it was comfortable beyond human reason, and also the price tag started with "1" instead of "3" or "5" or "10." 

Now, there’s a running joke among Kevin and I that I have the poorest spatial sense in creation. To this day, I have only the vaguest idea how long a foot is. Or an inch. Or a mile. On some level, I am deeply convinced that I can fit an elephant in a handbag, if only I (and perhaps the elephant) want it badly enough. Recognizing this flaw in my character, I carefully measure the available space before setting out on Chairquest.

Today, I met a man with worse spatial sense than me. He sold me the chair.

He was convinced he could fit it into the back of the Vibe. He couldn’t. After about twenty minutes of rotating and grunting, during which I got a vague urge for a cigarette, he admitted defeat and tied the thing to the roofrack. I didn’t really enjoy the drive, but at least I could keep track of it through the sunroof, and to give him credit, that sucker didn’t move an INCH.

I got it home. I cleared the space in the studio for it. I waited for Kevin to get home.

He got home, looked at the chair, pointed out that he had to be in church in twenty minutes, wouldn’t be home until late tomorrow night, and had a funeral to go to on Saturday. Then he sighed heavily, refused flatly to leave it on the porch for the next three days, that being entirely too redneck, and we started shoving.

We got it as far as the stairs, and realized that while it would undoubtedly fit IN the studio, getting it up TO the studio was suddenly problematic. The stairs, they were narrow. The chair, it was wide.

"You may have just bought a chair for the living room," said Kevin.

"Nooooooo….!"

He sighed, looked at me, looked at the chair, looked at the stairs, thought dark thoughts, got the socket wrench, took the feet off the chair, and the two of us, with much cursing and shoving and in his case actually climbing precariously over the banister, contorting to fit a very small clearance, swearing louder, and finally crawling free (while I traced the route to the emergency room in my head) got the bloody thing up the stairs.

KEVIN: One…two…three…PUSH! AAAAUGHMOTHERFUCKER!
URSULA: Hup!
KEVIN : Okay…that’s one step…

It took very little time in dead reckoning, and a lot longer while I was holding up the heavy end of the chair on the stairs. (I could hold it in place, I could not hope to dead lift it, so I got the job of bracing it while Kevin hauled.) By the end, Kevin was screaming obscenities at the chair. "FUCK YOU FUCK YOU YOU WILL NOT DEFEAT ME FUCK YOU THAT’S RIGHT CHAIR YOU TAKE THAT DOORWAY FUCK YOU."

I think he actually made it to church on time and everything.

So now I have a chair. And I am very happy.