Oh, and a pack of socks. Jeez.
I set out on what I thought would be an easy mission today: to buy a bitchin' rug to throw under my coffee table by the davenport to "tie the room together" as they say on those shows.
After hitting nearly every store I could think of (which I believe was around a dozen), I have discovered that buying a rug isn't quite as easy or affordable as it sounds. I found a rug de resistance at Urban Outfitters (of course) and when flipping it over to peep the price immediately felt that it was too expensive for what it is (of course). It's a simple and lovely circular shag rug that would look toadilly awesome beneath my coffee table. But. It's a hunnit dollars. I can maybe see going fifty for it. But $100? Come on!
I know, I know. I've been on the market for rugs before and it snot a bad price for a rug (although many would beg to differ). But something about buying a rug for $100 at Urban Outfitters rubs me the wrong way. Maybe because I know they prolly only paid $4.36 for it and the other $95.64 is for the Urban Outfitters ambiance and buying experience. Hmph.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, there's Ikea. I hate to admit that the place has grown on me over the years, mainly because they have those walls that look like bacon on the escalator up into the store and they're fun to look at. With my track record of bad juju putting Ikea furniture together I always swear to gawd I'll never buy anything from there again.. but lo and behold, in due time I find myself back in there poking around. I figured an Ikea rug wouldn't be too hard to put together; or at least I should hope not, so off to the big blue and yella cube I went as my last stop. They had a few circular rugs, but they all looked so... so... Ikea. Plus I don't want my place to be like the beginning of Fight Club where you look at it and catalog numbers and descriptions appear in thin air pointing at each item. I only have one thingy from there, but having two would lead to three, and four, and so on. We can't be having that.
So after my 10 mile walk through the Ikea complex, I headed to the Pinto and hung my head in shame. Is a $100 rug my only hope? If I bought it, would Frank shag it even more with his claws? He doesn't scratch things up, nor has the little dude ever hacked up a hairball or yacked on the floor (bless his little heart). But of course this would be the one thing he'd destroy, just because that's usually the way it goes.
Another thing: being a fan of living in hardwood floor-equipped dwellings, I have never owned a vacuum. So if I bought me a snazzy rug, I would also need a vacuum with which to keep it looking clean and fluffy. I guess I could go around with a straw siphoning the dirt up from it, but that's just too much work.
I guess at least I didn't come home empty handed: I drowned my rug-less sorrows in a Burger King chockit shake and found a screamin' deal on some neat socks. But socks and chockit shakes don't "tie" the living room together. It's only a temporary fix. I have a feeling that I'm inevitably going to be spending $100 on a trendy asshole shag rug and will never let myself hear the end of it. NO. Not gonna do it.
Perhaps I should just go with my original idea of throwing an inch of soil on the floor and growing a lawn in my apartment. But then I'd need a lawnmower.
*sigh*
