Perhaps this is why we've gotten along as a couple for 10+ years, I don't know. Maybe it's just the booze.
One of these certain strange priorities is sitting. Like, we're obsessed with having a comfortable place to sit. Beyond just comfort, he has a priority on this seated place being cool and/or shaded, and I have it on location and potential availability of foot accommodations.
Let's take vacation, for instance. Our Hawaii ones. We really like the sitting situation on our Maui trips because the house we like to rent has a great ocean facing porch with adjustable chaise loungers and comfy armchairs - your choice. It's covered, and therefore shaded from the sun but while still allowing breezes from all sides, and it faces the great Pacific, meaning that while I rest my legs in the prone position, I have something good to stare at.
It works out.
Unfortunately, not all sitting can be this awesome, but we do try.
And in our latest attempt at trying to sit well, we've outfitted our new patio with a number of seating options. Because you never know when what you want is a seat in the sun, a bench upon which to lie, a shaded seat in which to recline or a tiny hidden seat from which to spy on the beans because they do a lot of shady shit and you can't just be walking right up and peering in there if you expect to see what they're really up to.
I don't think I have to tell you what kind of creepy characters those beans are, am I right?
Whatever. You don't have to answer me right now - while the beans are watching. *wink*
What the fuck am I talking about? Oh yeah - the chairs.
So, when we redid our patio last summer, all I was really thinking about were these chairs. Actually, I didn't know these chairs were *the chairs* because when the time actually came to bring them to their forever home on our patio, I couldn't remember where I'd seen them and then gave up on ever being united with them in time and space and so bought another set of chairs with tears in my eyes.
No, really.
And then one day, as my sub-par chairs for which I'd settled were on their way to my house via UPS or whatever, I wandered out of a store in a nearby shopping center and TEE DAH there sat the chairs of unknown origin and my dreams in front of the store which I hadn't been able to remember.
I am not ashamed to admit that I stood in the doorway of the other store for a while, contemplating whether I should even go get a closer look at these chairs of my dreams because OH WHAT KIND OF CHAOS MIGHT ENSUE.
I live a fairly risk-free life, people - this is the kind of drama that gets me all chaotic, OK.
Eventually, however, I couldn't resist the siren song of their recycled milk jugs and what have you, so I wandered over, casually at first, not wanting to alert them to my approach or the excitement they could likely sense on the wind, as I was sweating with anticipation. But when I arrived and was face to face with these shining recycled plastic beacons of sitting perfection, I knew I was in it for the long haul.
I could see our future together; watching the moon rise over the garage while the fire pit roared to life alight with broken pallets and old floorboards, reading book after book with my feet rested on its ottoman of perfect height, staring hopefully at my garden from the perfect vantage point offered from its subtle reclined angle. It was a romantic moment and I hadn't even sat down.
I thought to myself, because I knew what it would mean if these chairs were as good as I imagined they'd be, "they're probably really uncomfortable because beauty doesn't usually follow function and, let's face it, they're way hot." That had me standing there for a few extra moments, imagining how a chair this perfect could possibly be anything other than 100% made for my ass.
And then I realized what a psycho I was, for thinking all the things I just told you, and threw down my bags (and not a little dramatically) and sat in the damn chair.
Oh my god if birds didn't just start singing right then.
Much as I'd sincerely expected, down in the deep rational part of my soul (it's way down there), these were the most comfortable and ideal patio chairs I could imagine. And now, oh goodie, I have to go about sending back the others and figuring out how to buy these and what color and when can I get them and what to tell Bubba about why I'm doing this crazy switcheroo and don't look at the credit card statement when it comes in the mail. Etc.
That was last summer.
Since I successfully orchestrated the return of the other chairs and the receipt, assembly and positioning around said fire pit of these perfect chairs, I've been nothing but 100% satisfied with them because, when it comes to this style of chair, these are the most perfect ones in existence.
Except for one thing.
Yes, I found a flaw. Not a huge, deal-breaking kind of flaw that makes me regret all the emotional turmoil and UPS wrestling I did to get them into my life, but one of those things that one might realize about a life partner a few years into a long term commitment - they could use a pillow.
Now, I'm not sure how that actually relates to human relationships since I've never actually thought that Bubba could use an additional pillow (though I have made him a cowboy pillowcase on request, so maybe that counts), but as far as these chairs went, I was certain that a properly positioned pillow just at neck height would add a level of perfection to this otherwise completely perfect sitting apparatus that would elevate it in my mind to Throne Status.
Which is a lot to say for a chair that doesn't recline (reclining is another one of my priorities, though I've chosen to deny it in this one situation) or come with a shirtless cocktail waiter bearing my evening G&T.
And since I'd already brought another lovely sitting arrangement into our lives that included some nice all-weather cushions, I surmised that these pillows might be made with matching all-weather fabric and that I would have to make them special so that they didn't look all wonky and storebought and take away from the contemporary beauty that is The Throne.
I feel that they look contemporary enough for these chairs and don't you try to tell me otherwise.
So that's what I did. I made a set of matching neck pillows for these chairs and now I can sit and read my book in the shade and when I inevitably feel the need for a quick doze, I can fold my book in my lap, lean back on the pillow which fits perfectly in the crook of my neck and snore away my last G&T even though my neighbors' kid's bedroom is, like, right there and he can probably hear me and judge me as the drunk hag that I am from there.
Scene of drunken snoring.
Not that I care, mind you, but I'm aware of it.
Anyway, if you have an Adirondack style patio chair, or some other ultra desirable patio chair composed of a back that has openings that might accommodate an attaching pillow like this (please don't tell me about it though because I can't go through that heartache again), perhaps you, too, would like to make a pillow for it so that you can drunkely nap in your chair and maybe call attention to your laziness on a breezy summer's day.
If so - here's the tutorial for the pillows. Cheers.
as though I'd been doing it before every single race I've run which I have not. In fact, up until last weekend, I'd not used Gu as my pre-training or pre-racing nutrition of choice like, ever.
cookbooks have been missing the boat on some stuff, and chocolate cakes can be improved in the healthy department by using beet puree for oil.
