Brooke here.

I knew the recession was over when throwpillows started wussing out again…

Actually, let’s back up and start this someplace else.

Zu is the clinical definition of hot mess.  He’s been doing quite well since Old Dog passed; we put Zu in a kennel before Cutter John was euthanized, and Brown left for a week immediately after we brought Zu back home, so we think Zu believes that Cutter John went on vacation with Brown and will come back home any time now (or, the canine equivalent of telling a small child that their pet went to live on a nice farm upstate).  He’s happy, loving, good-natured, and energetic to the point where this morning he snapped one of my toes by whipping an iron bar of a hind leg against my foot as we played.

Brown went off to see The Dark Knight Rises while I stayed home with the ice pack, but ice packs are boring so I set out on the continuing quest for the perfect throwpillow.  See, my birthday was yesterday and…

And I just realized I have to start this story someplace further back.

During high school and college, I worked in food service at a local country club.  I started at the bottom as a busboy and eventually made it to the Shack where I made mad tips as the wisecracking sarcastic beer wench.  If you worked in the Shack, you had the option of being sassy or sexy.  I took the less-traveled route; the girl who came before me used to wear Daisy Dukes and would wash her car in slow motion, which was cute and all but even at the age of seventeen I realized she was preparing for a lucrative future on the pole.*  Behind the clubhouse where the kitchen staff used to smoke (and drink, and… fun times), there was a pile of furniture that wasn’t good enough for customers but was still good enough for the employees who needed a place to rest while they smoked (and drank, and… fun times).  One day we got word from management that they were about to take this old furniture to the dump and…

Wait.  I need to go further back again, I think.

When I was four and was learning to swim, my sister and I took classes at a certain local country club.  It was an old club and at poolside there were some old retro patio bowl chairs that had survived from the 1950s or whenever.  We kids loved these chairs; they had a semi-gloss surface polished from decade upon decade of butts, and  you could jump into one and roll around in it like a ball in a cup.  They also had a little hole at the bottom to allow liquid to drain: this was a convenient design feature for pool patio furniture, especially furniture that was irresistible to very young children.  I distinctly remember peeing in one of those chairs.

Fast-forward to my years as a bar wench.  The bowl chairs had gradually fallen into disuse and had been shuffled off behind the building for the smoking (and drinking and… fun times).  By the time I was working there, there was one lone soldier left which hadn’t crumbled into complete disrepair.  When I heard they were about to take it to the dump, I outright stole the thing.

We lived within walking distance from the country club, if you consider three-and-a-half miles walking distance.  If the schedules didn’t line up for a drop off or a pick up, I walked.  That day, I walked home with a retro fiberglass bowl chair.  The chair came with me through college and multiple moves.  It had been languishing at our friends Steve and Allison’s place for several years now, as Brown and I had moved out of there when we bought our house and we had just never gotten around to reclaiming it.  So I woke up yesterday morning and found a This:

Brown and Elizabeth picked it up from Steve and Allison’s, stripped the legs of probably a half-century of rust, epoxied the fiberglass, and put a fresh coat of enamel paint on it.  It looks brand new.

So you can see why only the best throwpillow ever would do for this chair.

We looked around for just such a pillow yesterday with no luck whatsoever.  The recession is definitely over; there is no longer a need to design your home to convince you to live to fight another day.  Geometric prints in bold colors have been replaced by wishy-washy fronds and feathers and cutesy little owls.  There is also the return of my all-time most-hated design element, faded faux-vintage text.    People it is not that hard to find real printed burlap.

Today, I hit some of the discount stores to see if I could find last year’s pillows.  I was looking for dark colors to offset the robin’s egg blue, and I was not looking for anything with flora or fauna.  But, when fate hands you the perfect throwpillow, you damned well take it home to adorn your ancestral pee-chair.

And now I have a reading nook.

It’s so perfect I might even start saving up for one of those sinfully overpriced throws that no one with pets has ever been brave enough to purchase.  But I know I won’t follow through with it; the Hot Mess is already sneaking sniffs at the world’s most perfect throwpillow with featherthirst in his eyes.

* I just found out they make stripper poles for RVs.  Learn something new every day!