The Leather vs Persian rug tradoff.

An interesting light hearted story about marital bargaining and a new updated great room.

     Recently we decided that our family room was looking a little rundown. We had not spent a lot of money on either the furniture in there or the rug when we moved in. At that time, we felt we had spent enough on the house itself. Though I liked the pattern of the large sectional sofa we had and the colors fit well into my color scheme of the house, the sofa was sagging a bit and the chairs had gotten dirty. Afterall we have lived in our "new" house now for 12 years. We spent some time shopping and agonizing over what to replace the old.  Hubby wanted a large leather sectional sofa. I somehow had a prejudice against leather, thinking that it is too masculine? too impersonal and without character, to blocky looking... I don't know. I just never thought I wanted leather in my family room or living room. So  we went round and round. Finally we found a leather sectional that Hubby liked and I said I could live with IF we then replaced the inexpensive rug with a nice larger Persian rug. My husband agreed. We picked out two chairs and ottomons and I chose a nice paisley fabric that was only one of two fabrics that contained the sage green that was the color of the leather sofa. I hadn't thought about the difficulty of matching a Persian rug to that fabric and those colors. But my husband and I had a deal and we were proceeding.

     Yesterday morning I was lying abed reading the book for my upcoming science fiction bookclub. This book had become a pageturner: terrorists were heading toward Houston with a dirty bomb, a hostile AI was loose in cyberspace, and a nuke was minutes away from Washington DC. How could I put the book down, but Hubby recited a recent quote of the deceased basketball coach, Al McQuire: "If you want to succeed, get out of bed!" So I did and we went shopping for Persian rugs. The first store we came to was Shabahang's in Milwaukee. And low and behold the first rug that we looked at seemed to have the colors that were in

my paisley fabric. It was understated but had some rust red in the border and lots of shades of green, carmel and gold. We brought in the cushion to the chairs we had carried along and it went well. When we mentioned that our son had gone to school with the owner's brother, we seemed to get a very good price on the rug. We also looked at some runners for the hallway but hadn't decided on that yet. We went to look at two more places but could not get a better match and a better deal. We got home and called Shabahang and told him we wanted the rug but we weren't sure about the runners. Last night the owner and his father brought out the carpets and several runners. Well I loved the runners in the hallway too, so that put pressure on Hubby. He felt he couldn't turn me down, so we got the whole bundle. Afterwards he had a little buyer's remorse, but I was fine.

      The interesting thing is that I was against the leather and so won the agreement to get the Persian rug. But when the leather sectional arrived, I just loved it. The leather was so soft, and yet the frame and the firmness of the new sofa --well I just loved it. So Amos had made the bargain and it would not have been necessary. That gave him remorse as well. Ah, well, the dealings of a married couple. But, I did "get out of bed and succeed yesterday." I got a new great room.