A few months ago, Richard and I uprooted ourselves from Indiana to California, and because we’re cheap we decided to sell or give away anything that couldn’t fit into two cars. So as soon as we got to our new place in the Bay Area, we headed straight for IKEA to get what we thought were our two most direly needed items: a bed and a couch. The bed was found easily, but we felt their couches were just so…sad. And cheap-looking. So we decided to wait on the couch.

I’m sorry, but it’s just so sad and dumpy looking.

Because the bed couldn’t be delivered until the next day, we got an inflatable mattress from Target to use for one night. When lovely bed came, the mattress moved out to the living room where we used him as the saddest darn couch replacement ever. But, it was only temporary until we found a couch, so we dealt.

We spent the next week looking for couches. Almost every day we visited a furniture store looking for the magical couch. We wanted a couch with a chaise extension on one side, and we didn’t want to pay a ton for it, I was thinking in the $600-900 range. I could maybe top $1,000 if it was really bitchin’. But it didn’t exist.

These are all the places we searched for a couch. I think. It’s a blur. View Couch search 2012 in a larger map

Finally, exhausted, we went to a store called Scandinavian Designs, in Berkeley, on the recommendation of Richard’s parents who’d purchased their couch from this regional chain 30-odd years ago and still like it! So we went in, broken down from days and days of futile shopping plus the nights and nights of trying to eat dinner, watch TV, and use the Internet while sitting on a stupid inflatable mattress. It was literally the only thing we had to sit on besides the bed. The floor in the living area was bamboo laminate so it wasn’t an option either.

Scandinavian Designs was WAY TOO EXPENSIVE. I mean really. Their couches are all custom-made and pricey, unless you wanted a floor model that someone else had rejected. But we were so tired. We needed something to sit on, and for God’s sake we didn’t want to ever have to go through this soul-sucking process of couch-shopping again. Then we sat on this couch named Whitby and couldn’t leave him. Her? Him, I think. So we rationalized that if this couch lasted us 30 years, it would be a good investment. And we’ve spent that much on computers. So this will totally be worth it.

Is beautiful, non?

We picked out some fabric (with much, much debate and trepidation), and paid the lady (named Darleen, of all things) who told us that although these are custom orders, this particular manufacturer was really good about turnaround times so it would probably be here in four weeks. (But we have to put four to six on the receipt, just to cover our bases. You understand.) Four weeks was too long, but we again rationalized that we could deal with the lack of a couch for a little while longer.

We couldn’t deal with the inflatable mattress any longer, though, so we bought some butterfly-ish chairs from Target to use for a month.

That was on August 12, 2012. Here is our seating situation today.

FIERY FURY THAT BURNS WITH THE STRENGTH OF A THOUSAND SUNS RULES OUR HEARTS when we have to sit on these STUPID F*$@ING CHAIRS, waiting for that SONOFABITCH WHITBY to show up for almost FOUR MONTHS.

FOUR MONTHS.

FOUR MONTHS.

To be continued.