Twelve Step Program

It is said that before you can rebuild your life, you have to hit bottom. I don’t think that is a hard and fast rule, but hitting bottom or hovering just above bottom would certainly be incentive to work harder. Well, or give up all together I suppose.

I’m pretty sure that I am getting pretty close. Let me explain.

Just before Christmas, Louise and I decided to rearrange the furniture. Louise and I haven’t changed the furniture for a long time and we wouldn’t have now if the old TV hadn’t died on us. The salesman promised that it would last almost forever, because the only thing that could go wrong was that the bulb will eventually burn out and once replaced the picture would be good for another 10,000 hours. Who could have predicted the salesman would lie right to our faces? He didn’t seem like a liar, but he sure as hell was!

We lived with several “bright” spots on the screen for a couple of months but eventually we ended up buying one of those flat screen jobbies that are all the rage. We didn’t even have a salesman to lie to us this time, we bought online from Costco. I dropped the old behemoth off at Staples and set up the new one, which didn’t take nearly the amount of room the old one needed. Hence, the change in our furniture layout. It is much more cozy and comfortable now. That’s what you call a win, win solution, everyone is happy.

Well, not everyone I suppose. You see, we had to move the love seat which had been against the window and happened to be Buster’s perch where he would survey his realm. Without the love seat, he could no longer bark at every leaf that happened to blow across the yard, or anyone that had the nerve to walk on the street. God forbid a cat would wander up the alley across the street! Strangely enough, he was okay with squirrels and rabbits. I kind of liked the new quiet, it was…well…quiet.

There was a faction in the house that thought it to be mean not to have a place where he could look out the window, if not out right cruel. Both Louise and Maegan, who had been visiting from Toronto, felt I was just being cruel. Yes, I caved in to the pressure and found an old coffee table in the basement that when covered with a quilt made a nice place for his highness to sit. Well, sit and bark.

The table was not the best solution, so we began to look for something a little more permanent. I thought that I could make something that would be nice…ish, but I didn’t really want to expend the effort for “Barky McBarkerton”. We found a nice padded storage seat at Home Outfitters that would work and it was on sale. It still cost more than the reclaimed coffee table with the quilt, but what the hell. Buster seems to like it and we can store blankets inside for those cold nights of TV watching.

The bottom that I was talking about earlier is buying furniture for the dog. Not only for the dog, but so that the dog can bark and piss me off while doing it. Clothes and costumes can’t be too far off. The only good thing to come of this is that there is no where to go but up. I wonder if there is a twelve step program that I can sign up for