Sneaky Shrikey

We've been spending a lot of time lately cruising Craig's List, looking for a few more items for Peeper - a dresser, a glider or rocker, a breast pump (I was willing to pay the big bucks when I thought I'd be using it multiple times a day at work, but now I'm thinking a decent used one will be sufficient) and who knows what else.

I've been driving Shrike nuts with my pickiness, especially about the dresser.

("Driving her nuts" is not an exaggeration. This was actually discussed at our last session with Dr T!)

The thing is that, first, I want something that's rather square and flat and not-squiggly, so it matches the general style of the crib.

The second issue that I have with most of the dressers we've seen is that we want the furniture to be white, or black, or white-and-black, and most of them are stained wood, and I just have a thing about painting over nice, stained wood.

(Dr. T's response to that was, "Oh, I live with one of those, too!")

It's almost a moral objection; I just can't bring myself to do it. Maybe because I've stripped multiple layers of paint from furniture before, to get to the pretty wood underneath, and paint it.
But I can't quite explain why it was okay to paint the changing table and toy box, although they were stained wood.

Mostly because the changing table wasn't really stained wood, it's crappy wood-like-substance with plasticky shellacky varnish stuff. And the toy box was old and ugly stained wood. And we paid $3 total for the two pieces.

But I digress . . .

So, we're also looking for a rocker or glider. I hear that a lot of people prefer a glider, so I thought that might be the way to go. Also they seem to be cushy.

But on the other hand, they are usually ugly. Most seem to have cushions in really dumb colors, and the used ones seem to have cushions that are filthy.

Then we realized that we could just have the cushions recovered, in a black and white fabric, to match the room!

So, the goal was to find a white one, or possible stained wood (see crappy wood caveat, above) and paint it white.

A few days ago, Shrike got fed up with my rejecting her suggestions, and told me she was "never going on Craig's List again. If you want something, you can look for it."

Fair enough.

Today, I sent her some links, for a couple of gliders and a dresser, to get her opinion.

She emailed back to say that she would prefer a rocker, because she thinks gliders are ugly.

Um, okay. I thought we'd been looking for gliders all this time, and I didn't think you cared, but okay.

Fast-forward to this evening . . . .

Shrike's just had me help her carry something out to the garage, and I'm headed back inside. She calls me back over to give me a kiss, and I try again to go inside. She calls me back again, and says, "You're not being very cooperative!"

I'm thinking, "What the hell? Is she trying to put the moves on me in the middle of the garage?"

Then she gestures toward the truck, and I see:


This is one of the very gliders I'd sent her a link to today!

It was in OldWorkTown - an hour from here!

And, I found out later, she'd already bought it and had it sitting in the garage when I emailed her the link.

That's why she emailed back, ostensibly nixing the whole glider proposal - she was afraid I'd email the sellers, and they'd tell me, "Well, I just sold it - to someone with the same very unusual hyphenated last name as yours, in fact."

It's already white, but depending on how well it cleans up, we may go ahead and paint it anyway. The cushions are quite ugly, but they come right off, and should be easy enough to recover.

Well, easy enough for someone who knows how to do such a thing.

Someone who is not us.

Probably the same someone-who-is-not-us that will be making our theoretical black and white curtains or valance or something for the windows.

But most importantly, we now have a glider, and I can quit stressing over finding one - and I didn't have to do anything to get it here!

That little shit.

I sure do love her.