Turning the Table

It started with the paint.

No, it started with the table, but it was just a table for more than a year. A beat up, chunky, water-stained, worn coffee table. I big, hefty chunk of wood, still a perfectly serviceable coffee table, solid. Heavy. Makes vacuuming the living room a chore. But was it ugly? Oh yes.

I had a picture of it, but managed to delete it recently, so you'll have to use your imagination.

Tori and Millie brought it home one night from a Craig's List curb call. You know, where someone posts on Craig's List "I've got some furniture," or bag of books, or a lava lamp or – seriously, this one was in Sunday morning – a bag of assorted animal bones. They give their address, say they're putting it on the curb, first come, first served. And you're off to the races!

Sounds tacky, I suppose, but it's fun. A come-as-you-are scavenger hunt. A couple of times I was just getting ready for bed around midnight and Tori would say, "We've gotta go! There's a something or other on the curb at ..." and we'd be off. Or the afternoon or morning, whenever. Sometimes you get there just as another person is driving away with it. Sometimes you get there and think, "This is crap. I'm not putting this in my hand, let alone in my car."

But sometimes it's just what you need, whether you knew it or not. And it's an adventure.

One evening Tori and Millie dashed out – so it had to be between August and October 2012, between when we moved into this house and when Millie left for school. When they came back they had, among other things, a coffee table.

Big, heavy, ugly coffee table. Still sturdy, but ugly. For a year it was good enough. It got the job done. In our house, the job for almost any flat horizontal surface is to let me pile paper and books and whatnot on it. And it did that well. There was usually so much stuff on it you couldn't really see how ugly it was.

Then one night not too long ago, Tori gave the table a good look. She started thinking.

This is where the paint comes in. And the comic books.

And since this is long enough, the rest of the story – which is pretty amazing – will be told tomorrow.