The New Chair...

Most of my adult life has been spent crammed into small rooms owned by people who didn't have to work because of the rent they were getting paid. Consequently, I've learned to limit the number of my possessions, to spend as little money on myself as possible, and, one way or another, to always deal with the need to move in the event of a rent increase. And so, for the first few years of tenancy in my current apartment, it didn't occur to me to find furniture, and I was therefore excited to find an abandoned coffee table on the sidewalk just a few blocks from my building. Years later, I was especially excited to find an abandoned couch, and, apart from an abandoned dining chair, that couch and coffee table were the only two pieces of real furniture I had outside my bedroom, until one day, when I found an abandoned throw pillow...

The pillow is indigo, the couch is green, and, because rainbows are important to me, I've been long aware of the fact that they're made of seven colors. So I thought it'd be funny to complete a "rainbow of comfort" by finding violet, cyan, yellow, orange, and red pillows. I therefore kept my eyes open, eventually finding a pillow that was definitely yellow, then one more that was arguably cyan (when one is desperate for cyan)...

But the arguably-cyan pillow wasn't alone. It was a companion pillow for an abandoned lounge chair...

The years spent in my apartment have been spent bereft of companionship. But I'd like to change that, so I went into my building's basement and dug out an old abandoned hand truck, determined to provide a comfortable chair for a guest (and/or a comfortable chair for me in the event of a guest preferring my couch).

Again, the abandoned chair was only a few blocks away, and since carrying its companion pillow that distance was easy, using a hand truck to wheel it across that same distance seemed like it'd be easy enough, until it came time to actually get it done and the actual distance involved seemed suddenly impossible...

But the chair was still there when I went back for it...

The journey involved sweat, but once the chair was loaded onto the hand truck, it was surprisingly easy to wheel from one block to another (and another, and another). I'm sure I looked more than a little goofy doing it, but since it was getting done at about 3:30 in the morning, the only opinions I had to worry about were those of the neighborhood cats. Here's one that actually came out of its yard to gawk, until it shied away when I decided to stop and take its picture...

My camera lens was all fogged up with sweat at the time, but I wiped it clean when I got the chair home. Then I took the following picture, showing that the chair's previous owner had tried using packaging tape to repair a cracked leg...

And this picture shows that I prefer sections of birch wood...

It smelled like cat piss and a double-dunked dose of Febreze, but I liked my new chair...

So I blasted it with baking soda, and once the smell faded, I thought it made a lovely addition to the whole living room area...

I also thought it was more green than cyan, so I decided to keep an eye out for more options. But the chair's been insanely comfortable, and I especially like sitting in it to see my living room from a different perspective...

So I think I'll keep an eye out for another chair...

I might even think about making some changes in my life, because the whole point of a living room should be to entertain guests, and it'd be wonderful to have a friend over, to host a small party, or maybe even to curl up on the couch with someone special while making use of the firewood I've collected...

Until then, I found a pillow that works for cyan (when one is desperate for cyan), and, that same night, I found a pink pillow...

Then one night while relaxing on the couch, I decided to unzip the green pillow just to see why it was so comfortable. You're never going to believe this, but there was actually another pillow inside it...

It's not just beautiful, it's red...

And red fits in perfectly with the rainbow color scheme...

All I need to complete the scheme is a purple pillow and an orange one. In the meantime, I have to squeeze between the new chair and the old couch to walk directly from the living room to the bedroom...

But I guess we all have to make sacrifices in order to be social.