Maybe a nice chesterfield

(BTW, the student never came. Shocking...not.)

It's the weekend, and we have finally started getting down to the nitty gritty of unpacking. Sort of. The kitchen is close (missing box of utensils found! Huzzah!) and the guest bedroom will be after the delivery of the very generous gift of a bed (the in-laws. Huzzah!). So all our once and future guests will now have a place to sleep that doesn't slowly deflate, a definite improvement. The living room is done except for the wall decor, but our bedroom remains a ramshackle collection of half-empty (but really half-full) boxes and the "great" room is still an absolute disaster "staging area" for the rest of the house.

However, we feel like we have made progress even here because we bought a couch yesterday. That's right, a leather couch, no less. We weren't planning on leather or even on getting a couch right now; in fact, the husband was all kinds of suspiciousl of even the idea of leather, which feeling I finally traced back to his belief that leather on couches equaled buttery soft, light-colored, not tanned hide that, were it still the common couch covering, would be totally impractical. Instead, our new couch, in tanned and treated "sandstone" is made of much tougher, wipe grape juice right off me, stuff. And, bonus of bonuses, it was the cheapest leather couch I've ever seen and one of the cheapest sofas around, period. Excitement all around.

Now, if only we could go on our promised trip to Ikea, all would be well. The list of things I want to get from there grows and grows, and the time we have left in which to make the five hour journey to Atlanta shrinks and shrinks. Living as I have only minutes from an Ikea since college has spoiled me rotten. And the fact that one just opened up near my parents only puts salt in the wound. I have a friend here who has never been (he has lived in Utah, Arizona, Florida, and here, so you see why) and says that whenever it comes up, people who've gone get these sorts of rapturous looks on their faces and find themselves at a loss for appropriate words, making vague but enthusiastic sounds about "home store...warehouse...showrooms...scandinavian design...cheap...did we mention the meatballs??" Guilty as described. It has to be experienced to be believed, I guess. BUT, our leather couch was cheaper than theirs, so they aren't the mightiest of the mighty...just really darn close!