One Man's Trash Is Another Woman's Ghettolocity

When we moved from Iowa, we had to leave behind a lot of stuff. When moving day came, the angel boys packed up the truck outside in the humidity while I stayed inside and cleaned like a crazy lady. At the end of the day, my very sweaty Go came back in, triumphantly announcing that he had managed to fit everything in, even though all along I had been saying that we had ordered too-small of a truck, to which he disagreed and assured me that he was the master packer and we'd be fine. "I even packed your car, my car and the passenger side of the moving truck! I used every square inch!" I congratulated him on his mad skills and was like "Yah, I guess we didn't need that bigger truck after all."

So an hour or so later, Go and I were getting the girls into my car, just minutes away from pulling out of the state of Iowa forever. I was right in the middle of my No-More-Iowa-Winters jig when I asked "And you got everything in the garage, right?" A look of horror crossed his face. I stopped dancing and just started laughing. My husband is a very, very, extremely smart man, but this was a really, really dumb move.

The garage was full of stuff we had stashed in there while we were trying to sell our place, along with normal garage stuff. This included two computer chairs and a BUNCH of stuff that we had absolutely no room to take. We gave everything away to our neighbors and friends and then got the heck out of there. "Oh well. I guess we'll just have to replace everything." And we did for the most part, except the computer chairs. The money is always needed elsewhere.

From day one in Pennsylvania, when in front of my computer, I have sat on a kitchen chair. It is hard and uncomfortable and was not made to be used in front of a computer, especially for any length of time. Fortunately, my bottom is well padded and I find myself saying out loud "Wow, it's a good thing I'm not a stick." You have to take these oppurtunities when they come, ladies.

I often think of our old computer chairs and know they are being well taken care of as our buddies the Ringgers now own them, well at least one of them, I think. When we were there for Thanksgiving last year, when no one was looking, I crept into their office, bent down, gave our old computer chair a hug and hummed it a little tune. I'm glad the Ringgers have it because what they were using before was worse than what I've been using, so I'm more than cool with it, especially since I get to visit it every once in awhile. Maybe next time I'll even sit down in it.

I am the RS secretary, which puts me in front of my computer quite a bit, especially in the fall when I'm putting together the picture directory. After spending an hour sitting on the hard slab of wood, I stood up to give myself a bassage (which is a made up word meaning "bottom massage", for anyone that's never had a conversation with my husband, who uses the word whenever possible) and all of a sudden it hit me: we have a perfectly good rocking chair in the basement and a huge European pillow that I could put on the seat that would be much more comfortable and more aesthetically pleasing than this kitchen chair.
During the first weeks after moving to PA, I was headed to church and saw this grimy rocking chair on the side of the road, along with a couple of bags of trash and recycling. I pulled over and heaved the chair into my car. I was so excited, I didn't even care that I was covered with cobwebs and how extremely ghetto I was, as what I just did was essentially dumpster dive. In the following days, I sanded it, painted it red and roughed it up a bit. Being unable to decide on a good place for it, it went down in the basement and has been sitting there for 2 years now. But now it's my computer chair and it's comfy and it looks good. Sometimes it pays to be a little ghetto. And my ghetto booty couldn't be happier.