Monday, August 26, 2002

We ordered the chair. But

We ordered the chair.  But it’s so much more than that.

Just a little before my birthday this year I got home from work on a standard issue wednesday to find a 9 x 5 business yellow envelope stuffed into our mailbox.  Handwritten, properly addressed, stamped, not cancelled, and, with a loopy little heart, return address: “Joy Challenger.” I took it up and checked it out.  I was tired and not in the mood for parlor games.  It seemed benign, I opened it with anthrax-foiling delicacy.  Inside: a sheet of notebook paper, folded, blank.  Inside the paper: ten $100 bills.  God’s honest truth.  A thousand dollars, cash in hand. I put the wad of money down and staggered to another room to cradle my brains in the crook of my arm till I understood better what had just happened.  I was still there when Kel got home; I had her take a look at it and she exploded in profanities.  “What is this?,” she paraphrasically asked.  A week later we had no more information. We still don’t today.  The mystery never got deeper, never got clearer.  We’re beneficiaries of an anonomous donor.  Bitchin’. 

We decided, with this windfall, to buy a mission rocker - et cetera.  We’ve done or will do more as well, but one thing Joy C. was going to bring to our lives was a damn nice piece of buttly comfort.  We’ve been looking for that single iconic chair for months now, over four counties so far and a lot of time on line.  I was almost ready to settle, to get something adequate in place of the perfect platonic ideal I’d had in mind....

I got home from Happy Hour kinda late last friday (particularly fine time at happy hour last friday - discrete wave to those who partook) and got home to a plate of fresh-baked biscotti with pistachios and dried cherries - groin-grabbingly good, really I think they’re the best biscotti I’ve ever had.  And lord knows I needed them then - it had been a long day and a longer night and my dinner had been a series of Anchor Liberties.  As I gnawed my way through my second (or third) cookie I noticed a catalogue had been laid out open for me.  The chair was there.  We ordered it.  It will be delivered Friday.  We have met the challenge and are about to reap the joy.

So how’s by you?