Keeping our heinies happy

Now that our family room renovations are finally complete, we are endeavoring to decorate the room in somewhat of a colonial period manner. The two most important criteria for creating this look are, of course: a) very little furniture, and b) very uncomfortable furniture.


So far we are succeeding spectacularly in both a) and b). Right now the room consists entirely of a few pieces made of the hardest wood one can imagine, unless you count our coats and jackets strewn across them. One of these pieces is a red garden bench, which looked very cute in the antique store but which was never meant for one to actually sit on, being decidedly unfriendly to one's heinie. When we watch TV we sit ramrod straight on this bench, getting up periodically -- like every 10 seconds -- to restore some feeling. 


No one can blame people in colonial times for having uncomfortable furniture, as they had more important things to worry about, such as how not to let their heinies freeze while using the privy in the winter. Plus many of them endeavored to follow the good Puritan standard of discomfort is next to godliness, which no doubt carried over to their choice of furniture.


But one does wish that they would have the foresight to invent sofas, which of course they could not because their doorways were too small to allow a sofa to fit through. Our own home, though it does not quite hark back to colonial days, nevertheless also has small doors and doorways. Colonists would have felt right at home with our doorways:


"Ah, thou hast a goodly doorway here! Mine buxom wife will but feebly fit through it!"


As it is, people have had to invent sofas that resemble what we imagine a sofa would have looked like back then, if they had had them. We have been endeavoring to choose one of these sofas for our family room, although they are called a settle rather than a sofa, because it sounds more authentic and because once you have settled in one you cannot get back out of it.


After painstaking research and deliberations, which involved, at one point, using the eeny-meeny-miny-moe method, we have finally chosen a particular settle and fabric. Well, we have chosen three fabric samples. The final choice will require, of course, further deliberations, consultations with every female I am acquainted with, and perhaps more rounds of eeny-meeny-miny-moe.


My sister has already weighed in on the three samples, giving her opinion that the one labeled Virginia Sampler, which consists of various trees and animals, reminds her of -- and I quote -- "Little Bunny Foo-Foo." Little Bunny Foo-Foo features prominently in a rhyme from my childhood, a rhyme valued chiefly for its ability to annoy adults with its constant repetition. I personally would never have associated the Virginia Sampler fabric with Little Bunny Foo-Foo. Clearly, consultation with others who have a deeper understanding of these things is already paying off.


The Hero, being unacquainted with Little Bunny Foo-Foo, likes all three fabric samples. Actually, he would like any of them. Okay, so he would like me to just choose one already so we can watch more than 10 seconds of TV at a time.