In the Saddle

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Oh my there’s so much going on.

So, first things first, we are finally getting ready to put our condo on the market. It’s been a long time coming and the time is right (despite being almost six months pregnant and the timing of everything being a little wonky cuz of that). Long story short, we have some neighbor issues, as you may know, and they recently got as resolved as they’re gonna get for now. So time is nigh to GTFO. While the waters are calm. While there are no sharks in sight.

Thus, we’ve begun the process of “editing” our place and getting it ready for market—taking down pictures of ourselves (there are a lot, we’re egomaniacs with pretty wedding pictures), clearing clutter from countertops, repainting dinged up walls, etc.

A particular eyesore has always been a small sleeper sofa (say that five times fast) (say five times fast five times fast) that was housed in our den. It was purchased at Ikea by my parents in 1997 as my sister’s couch in her first apartment out of college. It has gone from her place to BOTH my NY places and here to its final Saddle resting home in Chicago. It’s been spilled on, written on by mistake, puked on (just a little bit that I promptly cleaned off…thanks to my BFF Michael), and most recently, used as a sleeping/paw-licking/pillow humping playground for Jessa. This couch was one of her favorite spots in our apartment, as it was in the room with her crate, in the room that Jonny, and thereby Jessa, spent most of his time studying for law school and the bar exam, and the room that, up until recently, Jess had been confined to with a baby gate while we were not at home.

We would need to get rid of this couch anyway despite trying to sell and it being a total disgusto nasty item of furniture that any prospective buyer might see and be like, um, if the COUCH is that dirty, what else didn’t they clean?, because we need to prepare for the room being the baby’s room, given the likely possibility that we will not sell before March. So that has meant preparing poor little Jessa for losing “her” room to this little dudette in my belly. We started with giving her access to her regular sleeping bed in our bedroom, to those two rooms and part of our long hallway, to now having the run of the house. She’s doing pretty well with it…for the most part.

But the idea of showing the place made us need to get rid of this couch sooner. None of the charities we contacted would take a couch so disgusting (seriously) and so we put an ad up on Craig’s List basically begging someone to take it for free. We got one response from a fellow named Clyde. Of course, because I’m pregnant and irrational, and I’ve also watched WAY too many Lifetime movies, I suddenly got freaked out that this person was gonna beat us up and rob us and it would be a whole thing. Jonny’s response to that was “do you really think there are people who troll Craig’s List looking for people who need to give away furniture so that they can rob them? They’re already getting a FREE COUCH!” And I’m all, “DIDN’T YOU SEE THE CRAIGS LIST KILLER ON LMN????? HELLOOOOOOO???”

Needless to say, my fears were unfounded, and Clyde showed up last night with a truck, ready to take nasto off our hands. Our friend Billy came over to protect us help, they carried it down the stairs to Clyde’s truck, then the three of us ate Chinese food and all was well.

All except Jessa, who wandered down the hall into her room, looked around sadly and then looked up at me, like WTF?

So I gave her a big chewy treat. Cuz that’s how I will deal with making her feel better.

Them’s the punches, pup. Roll with ‘em.