Couches are comfy

I'm sprawled out on our new couch in the living room, ceiling fan blowing, crickets chirping outside (do they chirp? they certainly sound chirpy) with a nice, toasty laptop keeping my legs warm. I don't think there's a cozier place in the entire universe on nights like this. I am content with myself and my surroundings, writing from the soft glow of the hallway light. The only thing missing is a cat curled up by my feet. Then life would be perfect...

A couch is a very important element of a living room. Heather and I have discussed this before, and I think Corrine may have touched upon it in one of her blog entries as well. Certain couches are lumpy, others stiff, some are noisy because the leather creaks and others are just...hideously ugly. When I was really little, my parents had a retro-looking brown, black and white plaid couch and matching arm chair (which complemented the olive green carpet in the living room and the brown and orange carpet in the adjoining kitchen). When I was about six, they upgraded the entire downstairs--pretty new carpet for both rooms as well as a brand new couch and loveseat. They were never the type to plastic-wrap the furniture or tell my brother and I that we were banned from the room, so that couch became my first favorite couch...where I watched "The Dark Crystal" with Ryan and Dad while eating Cape Cod potato chips, drinking Pepsi and hugging Paddington Bear with all my might. (on a side note, I lost Paddington Bear in the bathroom at the airport in California nearly a year later and had a crying fit all the way home)...I read "Flowers in the Attic" on that couch and stared out the bay window praying for school to be cancelled in the winter. I shivered on that couch under blankets when I was feeling sick and my parents would come home and pat me on the head, asking me if I needed anything. It was my childhood couch.

My next favorite couch was (is) Jeff's navy blue one from IKEA. I first became acquainted with this couch in 1999 when I began visiting him at his off-campus apartment after a night of proofreading at The Daily Campus. I would wander in around midnight and we would watch movie after movie...for some reason, 3 a.m. never seemed an absurd bedtime to either of us...despite my 8 a.m. classes. We lounged around on that couch during Sunday mornings, we would eat almost an entire plate of freshly baked biscuits for "brunch", then at night we would make mac & cheese...and it didn't seem to matter that we were being completely unhealthy because we were together and happy. I danced around wearing his too-big-for-me American Eagle sweatshirt, and he made my stuffed animal talk and do dances (that's how I knew he was the one...he had a sense of humor about the fact that I still slept with a teddy bear...and he even imitated his voice properly...because after all, Beary DOES talk and he has a high-pitched voice). I fell in love on that couch many times over.

As I sit on this couch, tonight and every night, I contemplate the future...will we have holidays here, will people enjoy a glass of wine with us in this room, will my children someday take a nap here with me? Will my cat curl up across from me on the loveseat? What does the future hold? I know that many wonderful things are still in store...and I know that a lot of them will happen right here.