Not to whine, but…

I still have shopping to do. I need a decent chair for my bedroom. Now, I don’t need the silk cushioned Top Drawer chair, but I do need a “real” one. Comfortable, sturdy, well-constructed, suitable for many years of service. And a small table for setting down mai tai’s steaming cups of Entirely Proper and Not A Bit Eyebrow Raising Tea.

Ya, right. Tea. {Snort!}

(OK, so, actually I do like tea, quite a bit – but I also love me the mai tai’s and suspect that if I calculated things out by pure percentage there would be more mai tai’s hitting that little table over time than cups of tea – but I digress.)

I also want a set of furniture for the living room (currently furnished with four dining room chairs and two bedside tables with broken drawer pulls – and by “broken”, I mean “snapped off from the inside such that you can’t just buy new pulls and fix it, you need to repair the broken-out wood first and to do that you will need to rebuild the entire @*^&@ing drawer which will cost more than a new one neener-neener”): a small sofa, two club chairs and a coffee table.

Which, uh, go together. You know, like a set? You’ve heard of these, I know you have, they’re things that are all made to go together? As opposed to the ‘well, I got this chair out of a dumpster, IMAGINE, someone was throwing away that perfectly good chair, and that chair I got from my friend’s uncle’s cousin when they were moving to Argentina, and that table, well, it isn’t really a table it’s actually a milk crate covered with cardboard and then a re-purposed flat sheet, but you’d never know if I didn’t tell you, right?’ method of home furnishing?

The problem is, I don’t like shopping. I’m not a shopper. I’m not a person who says, “Oh joy! I’m going to the Angels Singing Furniture Store to spend hours and hours wandering around sitting in chairs looking for Ye Perfecte Chaire for my bedroom! Squeal!”

I’m more of the, “@*^&@ing chairs I can’t believe I have to go to that @*^&@ing Cave O’Furniture to look for a stupid chair. Probably won’t have one anyway. And I’m not spending no $300 on it, either! Stupid *^&@ing furniture with the @*^&@ patterns and no, I don’t know if I want a wing-back or a camel what the @*^&@ does that even MEAN?!” type shopper.

A joy to be around, no really. I’m sure salespeople are falling all over themselves throughout the Central Valley at the thought that I might be casting my shadow over their doorsill any moment now.

But I have learned my lesson about shopping for furniture online, having bought a couple chairs that way over the years that turned out to be far less than I’d hoped. And now that I’m actually willing to drop more than a hundred bucks for the set (well, probably ‘resigned to’ is better than ‘willing to’), well.

I have to find and/or make the time to go forth and find myself these furnishings.

Can you sense the enthusiasm coursing through my veins?

Are you high on something?

Because there isn’t any enthusiasm!! NONE!!! I am pissy about it, and you’d think I was being asked to go for a colonoscopy or something, this is how not-jazzed I am about it.

What’s really sad is, I’m excited about having the furniture. We’ve waited a long, long time for this stuff. For the first time, we’re not settling for whatever we can find at the thrift and/or consignment stores that mostly goes with what we have. No! We’re shopping for exactly what we want (which is not to say I won’t be checking the thrift and/or consignment stores first) (because I will be, thank you very much), which should be a source of much rejoicing and gaiety.

I will be very, very happy when it’s all over and the furniture is delivered. I will fawn all over my new things and probably behave in a very sappy manner indeed. If you had been here when California Closets finished up my closet and I was standing there sniveling into a Kleenex about how beautiful it all was, you’d know what I mean. Pathetic. And I have actually declared my love of the new home office / library structures (and boy are they STRUCTURES) aloud and in front of witnesses and I even used vulgarity (“I love these shelves so @*^&@ing much! I love them! Who’s a beautiful shelf? YOU ARE! Yessh you are-y-war-y, I wuv- oh, hello, did you, uh, want to ask me something about the tile in the bathroom? *ahem*…”)

But the process of finding and purchasing?

BAH, HUMBUG!!!

Oh well. It’s hard to have such problems, huh? Poor, poor me. What next, am I going to be asked to eat steak and drink champagne? Imagine the suffering!

Which reminds me: acorn squash. (I know, but it isn’t that I have ADD it’s just that – oh look! A squirrel!)

Take the acorn squash, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds (high maintenance to eat [little meat to a lot of pod] but nice just pan roasted with a hint of oil and salt) put the cut side down in a baking tray and add about a quarter cup of water. Bake at 350 for, eh, half an hour or so – until it’s nice and fork-tender. Depends on the size of the squash.

Then, flip it over, put a pat of butter (about a teaspoon-ish) into the middle, a sprinkling of salt (trust me, it needs a touch of salt), cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and brown sugar all over it, and put it back into the oven cut-side up until it’s all melty in the middle.

Eats like pie and does not suck at all.

Exactly not a bit like shopping for furniture. Which does suck, mightily, and tastes nothing like pie.