MORE Dead Old Lady Crap

Oh my god I’m gonna kill him.

But first, a little background…

Yes, you’ll all think this is strange, and I don’t usually tell people about it until we know them a little better, but you have to know in order for me to bitch about the following, so here goes:

Johnny sleeps on a futon in the living room.

When we moved in to our first apartment, ten years ago, we did the regular-old, normal-people, queen-bed thing. And we didn’t give up easily, either.

He snores, I slept in earplugs.

I snore, sometimes – mostly when I’m sick or drunk. (And which is less ladylike to admit? That I snore, or that I only snore when I’m dead-blind-paralytic drunk? Either way) Johnny just suffers and then tells everyone about it the next day, and for years...

We lasted about eighteen months, and then we parted sleepy-ways.

If you know us, you won’t be shocked to hear that, after eighteen months in that particular apartment, we still hadn’t finished unpacking, let alone set up the spare bedroom. So Johnny – being the gentleman of the house (and the louder snorer) – started sleeping on the futon in the living room.

This was fine with him because, being the youngest of thirteen children raised in a three-bedroom house on the south side of Dublin, he spent the first sixteen years of his life sleeping on the sofa in the sitting room.

When we at last did unpack and set up the second bedroom, he was perfectly happy to stay right where he was. When we moved apartments, he stayed there (on the futon, that is; he did allow it was okay to shift it to the new living room). And, finally, when we bought a house, still he stayed.

So there, I said it.

I don’t care that he doesn’t sleep with me. I lived alone for most of my adult life before I met him, and to be perfectly honest those eighteen months in Southie were uncomfortable for reasons that had to do with more than just his snoring. When we do spend an entire night in the same bed – when we travel, say – we usually wake up angry in the morning. He kicks and snores and I poke him and pee a lot. Not in the bed, I mean, but, you know: I’m up and down.

But I do wish he wouldn’t have to sleep in the living room.

We’ve had this fight enough times that I’ve given it up. I say “There’s a perfectly good – king sized! – bed in the guest room. There isn’t cable but we could put it in and get another TV. We’ve got a futon in the office, so there would still be a spare bedroom. Don’t you think you might be happier in there?”

Glare, glare, glare at me, he does!

“Okay fine, so you’re staying in the living room. But can we talk about the futon?”

This particular futon was a hand-me-down from our friend Marie of Roumania. She slept on it (I think, or maybe it was in her living room; I can’t remember) for – I’m going to hazard a guess and say fifteen years before she handed it down to us? And that was ten years ago. So the thing – much as I love Marie – ain’t been a glorious cycle of song for donkey’s years.

And he won’t replace it.

We got a new mattress for it last year, but that doesn’t mean stink when it comes to looking at the thing. And now that we’re finally getting our living room into some semblance of actual livable shape, I've been noticing for the first time what an eyesore this thing is.

Again, generally I don’t care. But we’re not going to live here forever. And when we do go to sell, it would help if the place didn’t look like it was decorated with Matthew McConaughey’s dorm-room cast-offs. If we’re going to do it then, well, mightn't we as well furnish it sooner? So we can actually enjoy our purchases for a while?

Johnny did acknowledge that the couch he slept on a few weeks ago when he was working down the Cape was nice, and he allowed as how he'd sleep on something like that if we could get one. But anyone who can afford to pay what Larry (Johnny’s boss) charges for house painting, has way more money than we will ever have. (I’m not saying it’s not worth it: it is. They’re good. But it’s a lot. And Johnny doesn’t get but an hourly wage out of the bargain.) So – although I didn’t see the couch – I’m going to assume we won’t be able to afford one like it any time soon.

And at last we get to why I’m gonna kill him.

Yesterday, in the building where I work (a residential building), I saw this notice:

FOR SALE:

TWIN DAY BED
SOLID CHERRY W/BRASS ACCENTS
ASKING $200.00
IF INTERESTED CALL blahblahblah

And this picture (now, this is a picture of the picture, for reasons that will become obvious soon enough):


Nice, right? For two hundred dollars? I mean, I know most people don’t have day beds in their living rooms, and I know a day bed is not a couch. But the way our living room is set up, it would not look out of place – and it would certainly do until we can afford the however-many thousands of dollars it would take to find a Johnny-approved substitute.

I took the notice off the wall. I didn’t call straight off, because even I know enough to not to do a thing like this without consulting the husband. Not to mention that we’re supposed to be socking money away for the furnace project and I shouldn’t be spending any $200 right this moment. But my birthday’s coming up, and if he sad yes, I figured, then I’d tell him this could be my present.

So I took the notice off the wall because I didn’t want anyone to buy it out from under me. I figured that, if he said no, I’d put it back up Monday morning and there would be no harm done.

I brought it home. I showed it to him. I asked if he'd consider sleeping on a thing like that.

“I guess,” he said, “if we put a futon mattress on it.”

“So can we get it? It could be my birthday present?”

“Sure. Why not?”

So I called. And it turned out that the woman who owned it died last week, and the notice was put up by her (retirement-aged) children. And they have to clean out the apartment in three days.

The daughter I spoke to said she’d really like to take it herself, for sentimental reasons, but she’s moving to Florida real soon and doesn’t see moving it into her condo and then moving it again in a few weeks. So they're selling it, but they plan to give the money to charity, and...

And then I felt like crap for having taken the notice down. I’d effectively stolen two of the three days they had to get rid of it. So then I had to buy it. But it didn’t matter, because I really, really did want the day bed anyway. Because of Johnny sleeping in the living room and everything.

We went to pick it up this morning, which is why we didn’t do anything else around this house today. We met the brother in the apartment and took the thing apart in record time and crammed it into Chuck (TFT). And as soon as we’re on the way home with it, Johnny turns to me and says:

“You realize there’s no way that’s fitting in our living room.”

!

?

“I, but – we, but – you, but —”

Oh, man!

“It could go in the back room,” he says.

That would be my office. Where there already is a futon. And lord-knows he won’t allow that one to be thrown away – he just took it as a hand me down not seven days ago. And I might add, even if he would allow it, I'd never have spent $200 right now to replace it because how many times do we have more guests than the spare bedroom can handle? And if we do, who are they that they’re so princess-and-the-pea precious they can’t pass out on that lump of extemporanea?

^%&^$#&!

So right now the day bed is piled in pieces on the porch.

And we’re $200 poorer.

And I will be expecting a birthday present from my husband, goddamnit.


I swear to god, I’m gonna kill him.