Donning our ultra-suburban personae this morning, we loaded up the minivan and headed into the countryside to continue our quest for a table that doesn�t fall down at some area antique stores (I refuse to acknowledge the use of the word antique as a verb).

There�s a small town about a half an hour from here � to use the word town is actually a bit ambitious � full of old wooden houses that look like they�re in danger of imploding at any moment and a couple of similar buildings that have been renovated and look Quaint with a capital Q. Almost all of them are antique stores, most of which are frequented by what mimi smartypants has referred to as �cat sweatshirt people.� There are a lot of cat sweatshirt people in this part of the world. At AJ�s last play class, two of the six other moms were wearing actual cat sweatshirts and I had a very hard time keeping a straight face. Thanks, mimi, for providing my day with some much needed irony. (New Improved One-A-Day Vitamins! Now with More Irony!)

But back to the stores. They are all stuffed to the gills with useless crap. Salt and pepper shakers shaped like chickens. Boxes of used postcareds. Baroque china cups and saucers. Wagon wheel coffee tables. Kewpie dolls. Innumerable lace doilies. Endless amounts of Kountry Kitchen kitsch. And nearly every store has a resident feline or two skulking about the place, somehow avoiding knocking over tables full of cordial glasses and crystal animals holding balloons. We managed to score an old whitewashed bench for our back hall. And then we found the table. It�s an art deco style mahogany table and six chairs in what appeared to be near perfect condition for an insanely cheap price. It was love at first sight, but it totally doesn�t go with the campy style of our Very Brady house. We came home, but I�m still thinking about it and may drive back to look again. On the one hand, we don�t expect to be in this house for too long and we doubt we�ll ever live in something quite this style again, so investing in something we like but doesn�t quite work shouldn�t be too bad. On the other had, we don�t want the place to look like crap while we�re here. Of course our current tables already look like crap. One has cracks all across its ceramic top and the wobbly screw-on legs are untightenable. This gives it the appearance of either being some kind of unidentifiable creature that is either bowlegged or about to start tap dancing around the room. The other table has legs that completely fall off every now and again, usually when you�ve just put down a large bowl of tomato soup or something equally disastrous. Both tables are seriously aesthetically impaired -- we�re still living with our post-college hand-me-downs.

I must go contemplate my home d�cor further. If only I put this amount of time and energy into something more worthy -- solving world hunger, for example. I hope you are all doing something more productive or interesting with your day.

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