Feeling Groovy. But Also Different. Plus: "A Gallery of Heinous Furniture"

Pretty sure Virginia Woolf had a table just like this one in her "Room of her Own" or whatever. I was forced to read that book in High School. It was on the horrible Summer Reading list, along with "Henderson the Rain King" by Saul Bellow. It made for a truly endless summer.
Actually, this may be her actual table... Its pretty old.

So. I woke up in an odd mood this morning as if to tell myself: "WAKE UP, DUMBASS, AND START YOUR LIFE!"

For some reason I felt like reevaluating a lot of things in my life and there are some changes I'd like to make. SO I am working on all that crap. Just sometimes you have to go through your life and look at realllly look at how your life is, and who is in it and what it is, and how you would like it to be. I spent 504 days in a rather fragile kind of state, emotionally frayed. As hideous at times as it was, I am determined to make something good come of it. I am a different person than I was even a month ago, maybe after having emerged somewhat emotionally intact from the 504 day ordeal. I feel a little stronger and maybe more ready to sort of face the world in a different, more real kind of way. There are some friendships I need to reevaluate, some things I'd like to change about myself, and ways I'd like to make my husband and son's life better. I am very very pissed off that I had to take this 504 day detour, but am happy to get back to my life and feel even more determined now to not only get back to my life, but also appoach it much differently than I have in the past. Its hard to be specific, but I'd like to be less of an ass clown. I don't know why this word came to mind, but it did. I am not motivated to look up its true meaning in the Urban Dictionary. Rather I will just use my own meaning of it: I'd like to maybe take my own life a little more seriously, as others do theirs. But enough about that...

The first thing I did this AM was to actually enter and use my office for the first time. I have an office in this house, a place where I can close the door and work, a place that only I am supposed to be in. It feels good to have that kind of space. I am going to start working from home really soon and other stuff so I am grateful to have this space. I have this crappy wooden table for a desk, that was some kind of a leftover from the Guitar Shop we had. I think it may have been a desk at one point but it is missing a drawer. I have always liked this table and it was my desk in this office before the house blew. Though, back then I had a quaint little cover over it to hide its hideousness. Today this table is once again in its room, but no cute cover. Today I celebrate its hideous scars and lack of a drawer. I may keep is as my desk forever, just to prove how trustworthy and reliable it is, and to prove that explosion or not, it cannot be killed by conventional weapons.

I told you I was in a weird mood.

It is paired with a lovely lawn chair which also made it through the explosion and subsequent fire, though it is from a set of four and, sadly, one of its friends melted and did not make it. Though, as an unexplored art form, melted furniture is an interesting medium. Every cloud has a silver lining.

I am looking out my window that faces the street and I see the sun rising in Canby. My neighbors are heading off to work. My family is sleeping, as Bill was up half the night unpacking and organizing his work shop place. Spencer played all day and went to bed finally after FOUR books, including the intolerably long "Zack brought his alligator to school" or whatever that stupid book is called, which he picks purposly because it is so long and he does not want to go to bed. He gets up about 7:30 usually, and he could go to preschool today for orientation and to meet the new kids but it only lasts an hour, and this is year three for him so what is the point of that? Real Preschool starts on Thursday 9 AM to 1 PM every day, four days a week. Not saying I want to get rid of the little guy but honestly? I am looking forward to it. I want to get rid of the little guy. For a bit. He needs it too. He had two very adult summers in a row. For the last ten months his best friend was a freaking goat. He needs to get back to his life too.

Anyway... Back to the changes Id like to make this year....

Nothing major really I just sometimes need to reevaluate who my friends are and why, and what my life is and how I would like it to be different. I love my husband and son, and my new house, but beyond that I need to make a few changes. I need things to be a little different. SO I am probably gonna start working on that today. So far, I have reheated some of yesterday's coffee (I have no idea how to make coffee, never have made a decent cup of coffee.... I leave it to others primarily) and I went to the backyard and dragged a lawn chair in thru the sliding doors and up the stairs into my office. Today I plan to FINISH FINALLY and TURN IN the clas notes for my Cranbrook Kingswood alumni magazine that were due Sept 8th, but the lady said its okay because I have not had the internet until yesterday and we were moving back in. I plan to also go take some pictures for my blog of the lovely array of furniture we have here in the house, mostly the table and chairs in the kitchen, the big comfy chair in the bonus room, my lovely office, and the very interesting coffeee table we got for free at a garage sale. Oddly this lady in the hoity toity Canby sub of TOFTE FARMS (pronounced Tofte FAHMS, with an intense mr. Howell accent) was moving her entire family to I think Brazil or someplace and she was so anxious to get rid of this thing she just gave it to us. We realllly wanted her suede buff couch which was enormous and gorgeous and at a bargain price BUT it was suede and huge and we were going to be homeless for a month, and also it was suede... get real. However friends of ours gave us a leather couch and chair, and oddly it seems to be Spencer Proof even though it is a very light color. Stuff just wipes right off of it. Perhaps leather is the way to go in the Chapin Household.

Well, the photographer from Architectural Digest just arrived.... I have to go.

WOW these pictorials get to press awfully fast these days.... Here is what will appear in the magazine:

A Gallery of Heinous Furniture

At first glance you might not think that this chair was given to us free of charge. it is very hard to believe, but it was absolutely free. it is very comfortable and I am hoping that it can in the Very very very near future be re-covered somehow. I don't want to hurt its feelings, but they do not make slipcovers to fit the enormity of this chair. It is very very comfortable, and great for fixing amplifiers as well, as you can see by this photo. It is our one and only souvenir of the Goat Farm, and I would have much preferred the actual goat to this chair, but city ordinances prevent me from keeping farm animals. Honestly, though, truth be told, that goat was more like a large dog anyway. Except for the sounds it made, and the size of its poop, you would never guess it was a goat. But anyway. what a chair, huh? Well, hang on to your pants, We're just getting warmed up.

This is an attractive piece from the late mesozoic period. I believe a cave man carved it out of a large tree stump, or maybe Lewis, or maybe Clark. Not sure. It unbelievably says "LANE" on the back, which is the hallmark of an actual legitimate furniture company, but I think it must be a typo.
Sturdy, utilitarian, it is from the "Early 1970's Cheap Motel" collection, of which I have become so very fond.




This, my friends, is one of the pieces of furniture to survive the blast. It used to be an Hammond B3 Organ, and someone gutted it and made it into a desk. I found this desk at an used office furniture store that was around the corner from our guitar shop in San Jose. The bench that came with it was the actual stool or whatever that it came with originally but this insanely manic hyperactive guy who owned this place sold that bench to a lady who wanted it for her hallway, or something, and he was stuck with this. He left it outside day after day in his fenced lot and we kept driving by it and wondering what the heck it was. I told myself one Friday if it was still there on Monday I would go in and ask him about it. We had bought a few things from him in the past for the shop, a couple of filing cabinets and chairs etc. He was always ready to play "Let's make a Deal" but part of his deal was that you had to drag it home yourself. That was okay, because we had a van, and it was right around the corner. Hyper Office Furniture Guy told me that he would give it to me for $35 dollars if I took it TODAY and he would personally deliver it to the Guitar Shop...which I did not argue with... Apparantly it was not his style and he badly wanted to get rid of it. I was his only nibble. What I love so much about it is that it still has like rings on the top where either the players or some Lounge Lizard rested their drinks, and a ring where obviously the tip jar was.

This is my trusty pink coffee mug. I like it mostly because it is pink, because I like pink things a lot, but also since it is pink, Bill is less likely to use it. Bill likes to fill travel mugs with coffee and lots of cream and then leave them in the car for a week or until they explode, whichever comes first. Even if you try to clean them later, they always taste like moldy congealed rotten coffee with cream, and you have to throw them away. Though many a travel mug has died this similar death at the hands of Bill, this one I have managed to hang on to. Mostly because he does not like to be seen with it. I mostly drink tea out of it, or used to. But I am waiting for some dude to come and drill the hole in the granite for the Hot Water machine thing, and then install it. I like coffee, but at heart I am a tea person. My favorite is is this mint flavor from Starbucks and Earl Grey. Also I am a fan of this White Blueberry tea.