Furniture Envy

I met Chrissy and Stephanie when our girls were all in preschool together 3 years ago. Erin, Zoe and Madison were inseparable and thankfully, I liked their moms because in those days playdates were all inclusive. Even better, Chrissy and Stephanie had little boys too. When the girls graduated and moved on to separate elementary schools we fell out of touch. But this year Chase, Max and Max (they're both Max S.'s) started school together and amazingly they're all best buddies.

Yesterday we got the girls and the boys together since everyone was off school for Martin Luther King Jr's birthday. The playdate started with the boys showing off their underwear and the girls slathering teal and fuschia make up on their eyes. Next the boys slid down the stairs on their butts for an hour and the girls put Zoe's pajamas on.

The moms didn't really feel like showing off their underwear and we all find it difficult to pull off teal and fuschia eye makeup and I sleep nude* so showing off our pajamas was out of the question. Instead we shared libations in honor of the holiday. White wine, which thinking about it now was totally inappropriate. Maybe a black and tan would have been more in tune with the holiday, but ah well.

The important part isn't what we drank it's that we galavanted about and while we shared a few drinks, the children played with shards of glass and hot irons....we don't have time to supervise while galavanting about in our 'liquor induced blissful parental state'.

Everytime I go to Stephanie's house I am overwhelmed with the need to tell her how much I love all of her furniture and she's very patient with me as I walk around fondling the beautiful dupioni curtains and licking the coffee table and humping her upholstered chairs and yesterday, she had added a new buffet to her dining area and I stripped my clothes off and rubbed my body all over it. All of this and I hadn't even gotten a hold of her lighting yet. Once I collected myself she showed me the paint they'll be putting on the walls and I stood there, naked, openly weeping.

I need a job.

And because I feel horrible about my apparent lack of thought about MLK Jr day. I will add this interesting discussion Maddie and I had about civil rights and the lack thereof in the past. I started out explaining how not that long ago people with dark colored skin couldn't go to the same schools that people with light colored skin could. They couldn't drink from the same drinking fountains or ride at the front of the bus and if someone with dark colored skin and someone with light colored skin fell in love, they weren't allowed to get married.

She absorbed all these examples with wide eyes and then said, "Could people with dark colored skin have pets?"

Because that's the worst kind of injustice her six year old mind can come up with.

Here's a link to the I Have a Dream speech and if you can listen to it without breaking out the goosebumps, you're a robot with a serious program malfunction.

(link via One Good Thing.)

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*Jesus Christ I don't sleep nude. We're living in the frozen tundra!

Comments

[DLG in Brighton]

Yesterday, I sent several friends and family members the NPR link below. I said that while listening to the Harlem Boys & Girls Choir recite Dr. King's 'I Have a Dream' speech, I got goosebumps. Funny that you said the same thing. :)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4455697

[Lisa]

I think somehow I carried your egg and gave birth to your daughter. She treats Pottery Barn like the vatican. She chooses "Sensible Chic" over "Lizzie McGuire" any day. She is 10, but she has the furniture envy.

[blackbird]

sadly - I have nothing intelligent to add re Dr. King. stupidly, I wondered for a whole week one year just WHO this little boy "martin," that my kid was learning about at school, was.
As for the furniture issue. I actually live in the blissfully deluded state wherein I mentally picture each piece of furniture I am purchasing in the PB catalog -- and then WE NEVER DO IT.

[Sarcastic Journalist]

i used to sleep nude before "the boobies" came.

[JT]

I am currently in the midst of a minor parenting crisis about MLK, only because my son's preschool (PRESCHOOL!) did something during Music last week where they talked about Dr. King, explained how he was ASSASSINATED! and then all sang a song about him. My 4 1/2 yr-old son promptly began drawing pictures of men with black outlines, wearing crowns, and dotted with bulletholes. He says "kill" alot now, too. When I explained how disturbed I was to his teacher, she said that they've done this program for the past three years (cementing it into my son's head, apparently), and that they don't think there's anything wrong with it.

By contrast, my friend's son was in Sunday School and they talked about Dr. King and how he helped change rules that were unfair to people with different colored skin, and inspired others to stand up and try to change unfair rules, too. I thought that was much more appropriate.

[RockStar Mommy]

I tried sleeping nude once but couldn't get 5 straight minutes of sleeping because I kept waking up in a panic thinking that THIS is going to be the night where the house goes ablaze and I have to grab my kid and run out the door and stand in the middle of the street to watch it all burn down- NUDE! I sleep much sounder in PJ's.

[Cori]

I ahve the funniest mental image of you in your friend's house and I know I will think of it when I go to my decorator friend's house. *God, give me the strength not to rub all up on her couch*

And...I sooo would show off my underwear, like the boys!

[melissaS]

Ah, but I don't wear underwear either!

Weeeeee!

[panajane]

I loved this entry. Well, crap I love all of your stuff.

[Grace]

Oh furniture envy? I know THAT one. My one girlfriend had a beautifully decorated home. She had paint on the walls. Crown molding put up. Handmade window coverings. I used to LOVE going to her house because she was a great fun gal but once I got home I always felt my house wasn't quite up to snuff... Ho-hum...

[Zach]

Was it Devine paint? We have that- good stuff!

[melissaS]

I don't know...does your paint make you weep, naked? If so, then it's the same stuff.

[Rebecca]

Frozen tundra is right! I live in the great MI too. Just a bit North of you I believe. North of Pontiac, there is a place called: Waterford. (A.K.A.) Water-tucky. :)
Where its 60 degrees out one day and -20 the next.

[Texas T-bone]

I don't envy anyone who owns a coffee table. They are pushed upon us my sellers of magazine subscriptions (said magazines usually cover the tops of them) and the Shin Institute , which makes millions studying knee, shin and ankle injuries caused by misplaced coffee tables. We got rid of ours and it amazingly makes our living room bigger and less dangerous. Friends don't let friends have them.