Fri 04/23/2010 3:56 PM

saying goodbye to our first sofa set

The ol' couch and loveseat. And Chris in the background on the phone... LOL.

We bought our first brand new living room set back in 2001, a year after we moved into our first apartment. I remember what a frustrating process it was, finding something we both liked which would fit into our existing color scheme, which we were not interested in changing. The set we were replacing, which had been handed down to us by Chris' parents, as a result of its age was extremely low to the ground, and having recently developed arthritis in my dominant right knee, I was no longer able to stand up from it without help. So the new furniture needed to be nice and high, both to facilitate healing in my beat up knee, and to prolong the time before it, too, would become too low for me to stand up from. Any visible wood would have to match the finish on our TV cabinet and coffee table. And the material had to be something we'd both be comfortable on. No leather, as it's too cold. Nothing with too high a friction factor, so it wouldn't be hard for me to shift positions and my hair wouldn't constantly be standing on end with static electricity. We hunted, and hunted. And hunted. For weeks. We were about to give up entirely when we walked into one last furniture store... and there it was. The couch and loveseat that fit all our criteria straight off the showroom floor, including price, expressed our personalities perfectly, and would serve us faithfully for the next nine years.

Time has taken its toll, and these pieces have gradually reached a point where I'm having a hard time getting up from them, just like the old hand-me-down set. They also took quite a beating during Brooskey's puppyhood. Two of the throw pillows have had the decorative buttons in the center pulled out, and one cushion had its zipper totally obliterated and much of the foam torn up and spread around the house. And the armrest on one end of the couch, where Brooskey sits all day long, has taken on a much darker hue than it had originally. So, we knew it was coming to be time to replace this set, now that Brooskey has matured and is no longer destructive, with something that would be easier to keep clean and be more ergonomically sound for both of our aging bodies.

It was again a long, tedious hunt to find something we liked and could afford (thankfully, we had some help in the latter department from Chris' parents, as gifts for Christmas and Chris' birthday). Amazingly, we found ourselves once again, nearly at the end of our rope, walking into that same furniture store where we ended up nine years ago... yet again confronted, in almost exactly the same spot on the floor, with our next sofa set. Why we didn't start in this store to begin with is beyond me! This time it was something similar to several sets we had looked at in other stores, but nearly half the price. And this time the floor model wasn't quite perfect: we needed a slightly different configuration (it's a sectional) and a different fabric, so we custom ordered it.

We're expecting the new couch in any day now, so we have precious little time left with the ol' faithful "first" living room set. It is moving on to help out Chris' cousin and his girlfriend, who recently got their own place, and if they get that zipper fixed I'm sure it will serve them well until they are ready for their first brand new set. In the meantime I am getting pretty anxious for the new one to arrive!

This post inspired by a writing prompt from the Imagination Prompt Generator: "What are you saying goodbye to?"

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saying goodbye to our first sofa set

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