A Peine For Your Thoughts

I’ve always been enamored with the idea of filling my house with old stuff. Sometimes it creeps me out that old stuff used to belong to other people who may or may not have lived like the Edies in Grey Gardens, which means the old stuff may or may not be covered in old raccoon pee, but I try not to think about it that way.

That musty smell is the scent of TIME. Not raccoon pee.

When I set out to fill our home with timeless treasures, I had no idea that I needed shoulder pads. A mouth guard. A can of pepper spray.

Don’t let the fact that most antique shops are filled with blue-haired women fool you.

These broads are RUTHLESS.

Yesterday was the Urban Market in Houston. It’s a huge antiques extravaganza put on three times a year in an empty field full of white tents. I went to the Urban Market with an agenda. You have to have an agenda when you shop for antiques, or you end up at home with a bag full of antique pigtails. And you have no idea how it happened.

The number one thing on my agenda was interesting dining room chairs. Drew and I have a huge dining room table surrounded by two different sets of Ikea chairs. Four brown chairs are mine, four black chairs are his. We have this fantasy of replacing them with eight completely different chairs that are eclectic and fun. We want two to look like thrones, so we can each sit at either end of the long table in throne-like chairs and yell at each other to pass the salt, just like The Tudors.

Minus the be-heading.

As we tromped through the sea of white tents, I saw lots of chairs. None of them spoke to me. Until I spotted The Chair. It was in the corner of a tent. It was high-backed, stained dark with a green upholstered seat. It was only $50. I set a world record for the 100 meter dash across the tent and just as I was about to reach my arm out to touch it, a woman swooped out of nowhere and grabbed my chair. I stared at her red manicured talons, wrapped around the back of The Chair, MY CHAIR, and I heard her yell a guttural “BRUCE! Hey Bruce! Oh Bruce tell them we’ll take this one too!”

Impossible. I looked above the crowd, hoping to see that Bruce would be a stern-faced old man who hated the beautiful chair. I prayed I’d see that Bruce was shaking his head at his harpy of a wife. I silently begged Bruce to say no, to tell the woman to get her hands off what was obviously MY CHAIR.

Oh Bruce. Bruce was at an antiques extravaganza. With his wife. During a Houston Texans game. Bruce didn’t just say yes.

Bruce said “Yes Ma’am.”

My aunt, who was in town from Bartlesville, still believes in the good in every heart of every human. She looked at my glum face, her eyes shining with optimism.

“Why don’t you just tell her you wanted that chair? Maybe she’s buying it for a shop and she’ll just let you have it?”

Oh Bartlesville, how I miss you and and your kind people. I knew the chances of that happening were about as good as the chance of me ever fitting in my high school jeans again, but I really wanted the chair. So I gathered my courage and went up to Bruce while the Harpy had her back to us, crunching some numbers on her iPhone.

“Excuse me, sir. Is your wife going to buy that chair?”

“Which chair?” he asked.

“That one,” I said as I pointed in the general direction of The Chair, hoping he’d just give up on figuring out which one I was talking about, say no, and then distract his wife while I intercepted The Chair and ran it to the goal line.

As Bruce peered through bifocals at the mass of chairs, the Harpy’s acute sense of hearing made her turn from her calculations.

“What? What’s going on?” she asked, swooping in yet again, talons splayed. Instinctively, I covered my face. I can’t have her slashing up my money maker.

I silently made the cut throat sign to Bruce, willing him not to tell his wife what we were talking about. But, he turned to his wife and said, “This lady wants to know if you’re buying that chair.”

The Harpy peered at me. “That chair? That chair is mine. I’m buying that chair.”

GAH Bruce! How can you live with a woman and not know at least this one very crucial part of the Female Code?

Maybe she wasn’t going to buy the chair before. But once she knew I wanted it?

It suddenly became the most important piece of furniture she’d ever seen in her entire life.