Living Room Revolt

 

I’ve done it.

I’ve bought a rug. Not just any rug, but in an act of rebellion against a lifetime of being sensible, a white rug.

Years ago, we bought furniture for the living room, in the first flushes of excitement at being here, at different stores and different times.

The result – the chair on one side of the room is a greeny-gray with big cream ibises (birds), while the couch on the other side is a striped true gray. Thus, the need for a white rug to span the gap while tying everything together.  

In my defense, it’s not a big rug, so we can tramp back and forth next to it. Plus, we’re not throwing on our overalls to go out and plow the back forty here; about all we’re likely to have on our sandals is sand.

Still, last night’s dream featured my old cat Calvin presenting me with the bloody leftover of something he’d killed and dropping it right on the new rug. And of course I couldn’t clean it up because everything became a tangle of grandchildren, visiting little old ladies who wouldn’t leave, and buckets that I kept filling but never got near the stain.

But I love the rug. I love shuffling my bare feet in it.  It’s so soft and fluffy that I could nap on it.

Lately, friends in my same advanced age range and I have embraced a defiant new mantra to live by:

If Not Now, When?