Seated in Seattle

Our love seat, a compact microfiber suede model, was delivered from Macy’s today. I worked from home in order to accept the delivery. The first thing I did after the delivery guys left was sit down on the new love seat for about fifteen seconds. The second thing I did was throw a bed sheet over it to forestall the inevitable — I know Simone’s going to ruin it; I just didn't want her to ruin it today.

When David got home from work I had him take the sheet off and set up the camera on top of the TV for an American family self-portrait with love seat. Simone, a highly evolved predator detecting fresh upholstery, got in the picture as well. (To show what a skillful predator she is, she has cannily camouflaged herself by placing herself in front of David's black shirt.)

We celebrated by sitting side by side and watching Blades of Glory, the Netflix selection we had on hand. We have the two-at-a-time Netflix plan, which has its pitfalls. You can seed your queue all you want with serious, high-minded fare you know you should see, like The Corporation or When the Levees Broke, but come Friday night all you want to see is the other of the two DVDs they sent you — The Simpsons Movie or Superbad. We held on to The Lives of Others for weeks while we watched and returned Napoleon Dynamite, The Music Man, and other silver slivers of pure entertainment. We finally admitted to ourselves that we were probably never going to “feel like” watching a highly acclaimed drama set in East Germany, so we just made ourselves sit down and watch the damn thing. (Very good film, by the way — glad we did see it.)