Large Purchase Alert

Excluding our subsidized mattress (which may be the best thing we own in my opinion), we just bought the most expensive item of furniture ever in our entire married life.

I had been looking for a coffee table for a long time at the thrift stores, but apparently no one gives up coffee tables until they're (a) so ugly even a tablecloth won't help, or (b) no longer able to support their own weight.

I looked in other places, too, most notably our usual furniture source, which is the side of the road on Sunday nights. We have friends in other parts of town who come here to our neighborhood on Sunday nights because it's so highly regarded in the field of discard redemption. You have to be quick, though. And smart, or else the professional muscle, cruising in their Chevy Astros and converted landscaping trailers, will beat you to the really good stuff. K. had to physically sit on a particularly nice bookshelf once to fend off her fellow circling wolves while she dialed my number.

But enough about what we do for fun on the weekends. To be concise about it, there were no coffee tables worth having to be had. So i mustered up my financial courage Tuesday night and marched out to spend the money. Now we have a coffee table. It was $30 at Wal-Mart.