The Booger Couch

While the bathroom area of the homestead flaunts its neglect like a dust, hair, pee and toothpaste-glob homecoming corsage, other areas decline more gradually. I’ve serenaded you with songs of dirty bathroom and refrigerator woe, but now mine eyes suddenly feast upon squalor so offensive it necessitates swift action—namely, blogging. Join me and myself (I is far too busy right now) on a tour of our mid-century modern home:

Myself: Ahhhh, nice open floor plan, lots of light and windows. Had they a couple hundred-thousand more dollars, these Dwellos (informal form of Dwellophiles, use with Tu rather than Usted) could really make something of this place. Cool shag rug—not bad for $80 from Target.

Me: Check out that split-pea green leather sectional (yes the one that 2-year-old peed on—discovered 24 hours later when it turned to pee-paste, but SHHH, that’s the good couch). Ah, the mixed-use kitchen/TV room—perfect for cooking while the kids play and absorb screen-rays.

Myself: Wait a minute! What’s this? How strange. Do I spy a damask covered velvet sofa? Very genre-confusing…Oh, silly me, that’s not damask. Closer investigation reveals an assortment of leaky stain trails and discolored blotches, rather than a floral bower. Interesting hand, this fabric…some sort of nubby textile, perhaps. Note how the design scrapes off like an old fossilized booger or dried hommos.

Me: Yes, just like those…(throat clearing) that’s the booger couch.

Myself: Let’s just swab for a quick specimen that we can mail off to Oprah so we can stage an intervention. Why does someone not attend to this miserable piece—a withered has been, once Room & Board regaled? What could possibly justify such neglect?

Me: Both courses of action lead to dead family members. First possibility: rent a Rug Doctor. Potentially fatal problem? Potential cleaning chemicals link to the disease that caused the seizure that killed John Travolta’s son. Second possibility? Call Stanley Steamer. Potentially fatal problem? Steamer representative likely psychotic killer that will perhaps clean sofa, but then proceed to julienne myself and my family into confetti cole slaw.

Myself: Stop watching 48 hours Investigates

Me: Oh. Kay.

Myself: How about a slipcover?

Me: Now that’s disgusting.

Myself: You’re not going to do anything about this are you?

Me: I’m powerless over this situation, clearly. You can sit on the good couch if you prefer.

Myself: You mean the pee-couch? I give up.

Me: Okay. Me, too.

And once again, a mother is caught between a booger and a pee place…