It has been brought to my attention that I don't post enough of the minutia of my life. I've been silent because life has been pretty general and Midwestern, but you asked for it, so before this post is done you will rue the day you asked for more of me and my whining. RUE IT!

As many people know, I have four cats. This isn't necessarily something I brag about, but I feel that it is important to the general tone of the story. Three of the four cats are very clingy, and will often roll up on a ball of orange and calico colored fur and groom each other until their fur is damp. It's equal parts cute and creepy. One day I noticed that Sprocket's gums were red, and he was missing some tiny top teeth. Loooong story short, they all have gingivitis. The antibiotics have helped, but if it's a recurring problem they might one day need to get their teeth pulled, which I guess is no big deal and might actually make them healthier in the long run without the recurring infections. Still---expensive. And bizarre. They all need to get jobs. Well, except for Louise, the smart one who managed NOT to get gum disease.

This story is eerily similar to an incident in which a friend of mine broke up with her boyfriend, and he ended up sleeping with someone in their circle of friends who slept with another person who broke up with someone in the circle who went and slept with another, until everyone in their social group ended up with chlamydia except for MY friend, who was smart enough not to join in the post-breakup disease fest.

But anyway, back to the post about my cats. (Are you ruing your desire to read this post yet? Really? Not yet? Well, you asked for it.) One of the more terrifying parts of going to the vet is that Sprocket is sort of a special needs cat who looks the part. He has a cloudy eye, the newly missing teeth, and he had a grooming problem earlier in the season so we trimmed part of his tail. Well, that looked dumb, so I let Skipper trim the rest of his tail fur right down to the skin. Because, you know, that wouldn't look dumb at all. So he's a fluffy orange cat with one busted eye, no front teeth and a poorly shaved tail. Strangely, the vet didn't even ask. She just wanted to know if his eye had always been cloudy, or what (it has.)

You may be wondering what this has to do with my love of free furniture. I assure you, I'm working my way there. See, much like my cats, the furniture in my house is what I like to think of as previously loved. When we first moved into the house, it was summer and 100 degrees outside, so we moved our red sofa and TV into the basement and used that as our living room. It was nice and cool, and it got even cooler a few weeks later when the basement flooded.

The sofa (which is still in the basement) is reddish leather that came from a hippie couple we knew who traveled the country in one of those short school buses which they converted into a camper. The leather is so bad that the back of the couch is just falling off. When we moved it from apartment to house, I tried to duct tape the back on so that we wouldn't lose any more stuffing/pieces of frame. When the Great Flood occurred we were forced to move to the living room and live above ground like normal people. Unfortunately the oddly shaped hippie couch wouldn't fit up the stairwell again. So we lived for months without a couch because couches are expensive and we needed a new fridge. Which is another story.

Jenny's mom happened to have a spare couch laying around, a wonderful unused thing that started its life as a lovely pink and blue plaid, and was later partially covered in warm florals, and finally was slip covered in hunter green microfiber. After a thorough febreezing (at this point, Jenny also had four cats) it was living room ready. And what a couch it is! I love this couch. Jenny doesn't understand why we think it's so great, but then, she wasn't sitting on folded blankets on her hardwood floors for months. The couch may be older than I am, but it's nice and firm. Not overstuffed. No stupid side cushions that always need fluffing. Long enough to sleep on. It's great. And it was free!

One of the reasons I was glad to get a couch is that people often sleep over. One time we laid out blankets and Skip and Jen actually slept on the hardwood in the living room. They must have been pretty tanked, because it would have been more comfortable if they'd just slept in the car, or out on the lawn. We have a guest bed, but it's very small and it's in the attic which isn't insulated and can get very, very hot.

So when my friend, Lovell, called to tell us that he was moving to Florida and was getting rid of his junk, including a futon, we were very excited. For some reason Bryan has always wanted a futon. Kind of like a little boy who grows up and always wants to have a shiny red sports car, only much much cheaper to insure. We planned on putting our new-to-us futon in the basement and using it for both fun and profit. I thought Lovell was being pretty generous, but he seemed eager to downplay his contribution to our Castle of Free Furniture. He kept repeating to me that it was a shitty futon. A shitty OUTDOOR futon. A shitty outdoor futon with a plywood base. As though we couldn't just replace/wash the mattress or something. We drove out to Cleveland Heights, and sure enough, there it was on his porch. Apparently he and his fiancee would sit out there on the crappy futon and drank pitchers of margaritas while melting candles into little tiny penis shapes. There were dozens of these wax sculptures, littering the porch floor and their coffee table. (Their shitty OUTDOOR coffee table.)

We got the futon into the hatchback and were all set to go when we realized that 1) a folded futon is STILL too long to fit into a Chevy Aveo hatchback and 2) we did not have any bungee cords. We did what any group of twenty somethings with messy cars would do (insert old-timey suspense filled organ music here)--located a mic cable and used that. It worked great. Until the lid started flying up and the whole mess started to slide out the back while we were on the road. We had to stop a few times and re-strap it down, and I ended turned around in my seat for the last 15 miles, just holding onto the thing and throwing my weight back every time it shifted. I know I sound bitter, and believe me, I was, but I must say that Bryan's MacGuivering with the mic cords was pretty impressive.

It's actually not that bad, for all of Lovell's cautionary posturing. The mattress isn't fabulous, and because of the plywood you can only lay one way when it's reclined. Still---free futon! Am I wrong in saying that there is no such thing as a bad shitty outdoor FREE futon?

I will end this post with a picture. Steve likes it too. I don't even want to know what he smells. It might spoil the surprise for whoever gets to sleep on it next.