New Furniture!

So, in the tradition we seem to have of spending money like drunken sailors, we have purchased a new recliner chair for Keith and a love seat for me. We had been thinking along these lines for quite some time now, we can't quite remember how long we've had our reclining sofa, a sofa that Keith loved but made my back hurt because it's stuffing was not so stuffed after however many years of rather chubby people sitting on it, but anyway, a sofa that had seen better days. A sofa that was also getting quite dingy looking what with chubby dirty people and chubby dirty cats sitting on it day after day, year after year.

The main reason we decided to go ahead and buy was that Joe is moving into a new house over here on our side of town and he didn't really want to bring his old nasty sofa over with him but wasn't really going to have a choice since he didn't even have enough money to move with let alone buy a new sofa. And thank you Grandma for once again helping this kid out!

We were discussing him saving up money over the next few months for a new sofa and then thought, hey, let's US buy the new stuff and he can have our old stuff for now. He'll have something a little less old and dingy to sit on and we've got a great excuse for the new! Win all around!

So, we went seating shopping the night before last, finding the recliner for Keith at one store where we also found a chair and ottoman set for me but unfortunately it was out of stock. Actually, not so unfortunately because we found a love seat that I liked even better than the chair at the next store we went to. Also, a love seat is big enough for the dog to sit next to me rather than on top of me.

Last night Keith took the old sofa apart, it being so big and bulky that it is built to where the back parts come off so that you can get it through a door, and he and Joe took it the few blocks over to his new house. They used one of Keith's clever inventions, a kind of flat cart that he built with casters on the bottom so that you can put heavy things on it and then just roll it where you want to go with the heavy stuff. There was still the lifting onto and off of the cart and also the lifting into and out of the truck, but better on both of their backs than carrying that thing the whole way.

So here is my living room just waiting for the new chair and love seat to be delivered this afternoon.

You can see Buddy there on his favorite cat stand if you look closely.

To save people's backs and not have Joe end up off work again, we kept in the tradition of spending money and are going to help him out with hiring movers to take all the big stuff over. And then no more spending money!

I'm a little (or maybe a lot) envious of his new house, it's about the same age as ours and built by the same company but way bigger than what we have. They have a living room and also a family room/den off of the living room/kitchen area and their kitchen is huge with a really nice dining area at the back of it with a bay window so that the kitchen seems so nice and light filled and they have a nice place to sit and eat. I think they are going to have a bit of culture shock getting used to a quiet neighborhood where they don't have drug addicts walking or riding their bikes down the street looking for something to steal. It also won't cost them so much to heat or cool the house since it is well insulated and energy efficient. They had cooling bills last year that were 3-4 times what it costs to keep our house cool. Like hundreds and hundreds more than ours, which never tops $200 even in the hottest time of the year.

So, goodbye Oildale for them, no more having panhandlers come up to you every time you get out of your car and no more worrying about someone breaking into the house, and no more drunken next door neighbor yelling at them. Hello nicer quieter neighborhood!

And hello, new recliner and love seat for us, which I will post pictures of tomorrow.

Oh, and if you've never been to Oildale, just picture this. Lots and lots of people at all hours of the day and night hanging around on the streets, either walking or riding bikes since they've either lost their license because of a DUI or just stole that bike. Most of the men are not wearing shirts and everybody has lots of tattoos because priorities. Why save your money for a car when you can get a tattoo instead? And then imagine this, one day I'm driving down the main street over there and see a young man walking his bike across the street and as he is walking his pants are falling down because low hanging pants are so in fashion, and by the time he gets to the other side of the street they are down around his ankles. True story and where else but Oildale would you see that?