I was just thinking

Back in the day when I was enjoying the life of ignorant wedded bliss, we were fortunate enough to have a house with a full basement.

For those of you who have lived in Kansas or are familiar with the tornadoes in that part of the country, you may assume that a basement’s primary use is that of shelter from the storms. And while that is what your spouse tells you when building a house, I soon found out that isn’t the primary use at all.

The first thing I discovered was that all of my “stuff” ended up down there in a dark room called “dad’s office.” The wonderful deer heads that once adorned our fireplace now were relegated to the dungeon and in their place were pastel watercolors, clocks and things made of metal and flowers.

Life moved on around me for a few years until finally I discovered the other use for our basement: more furniture. I also discovered that when a woman begins a sentence with the words “I was thinking” you can pretty much guarantee that whatever she is thinking about will cost you more than $2k. 

One day the wife was talking “at” me and mentioned the fact that we needed a new couch. Now already being the owners of two recently purchased couches and being a man who believes a couch is good until it falls apart, I questioned her wanting one.

She immediately went into full combat pose and pulled out all the stops on me. Did she argue? Did she try and make a point about design and color? Oh no, with nary a pause in the conversation she followed up with “then let's have another baby.”

My response: “What color couch would you like?” 

So over the years we ended up with three couches none of which were more than 5 years old which, in and of itself, reeks of a furniture fetish of some sort and was made worse when we started moving here and there.

The first time or two we moved it all ourselves with help from our kids but later had moving companies assist us. If you thought I complained about the huge couches you should have heard them --- the kids, that is --- whine

The day then came when the wife and I split the sheets, the furniture and about everything else in the house. When it came to divide three couches there was a problem. It's not what you think, however, all of a sudden when faced with the prospect of moving two couches by herself she decided that I needed them more than she did.

But alas, she ended up with them as my U-haul was “just the right size” and two wouldn’t fit.  

That was a few years ago before I decided to live fulltime on the road. Moving into the RV was an enlightening experience for me and when it was just Cooper and I we did just fine in a 26 foot 5th wheel.

With Trixe's arrival on the scene, however, I decided to get a monstrous 37 foot Conestoga and we are still trimming, paring, reducing and storing our stuff so that we can fit in it without things on the counter or on the floor.

I am down to one couch although it’s a nice leather wrap around and have found that just like the three I used to own, no one really sits on it much. It could be that we sit outside a lot when we have company or maybe the fact that my bearskin rug is draped over the back of the couch.

Either way, there is no basement for Trixie to exile me and my stuff so I can enjoy the fox, beaver, bear and deer trophies all from my chair.  

All in all, it’s a pretty good life. But, just yesterday, Trixie said, “You know, I was thinking....”