Why I ate Thanksgiving dinner on a picnic table

On a warm summer day a few months ago H. asked if I would help her carry our picnic table from our backyard into our dining room. This was under the pretence that she wanted to see how a long rectangular table would look in the room opposed to our current (and in my opinion perfectly fine) oblong table. I couldn't argue with her logic of seeing how it would look so I dropped what I was doing and helped her move the table. I assumed we would soon be moving it back into the yard. I was wrong.

Having placed the table in the dining room she then took to arranging the chairs around it and placing a table cloth upon. All to better get a feel for how it would look? Now you must realize that this picnic table is not new, in fact it is almost as old as AJ. It has suffered through many a blazing hot summer days and many a cold rains and snows. It has been repainted untold times and the wood is deeply weathered and warped. But amazingly enough if you throw a table cloth on it doesn't look that bad. Just don't try and slide anything across it as the warped boards will soon spill the item.

So now that we have gotten a feel for it we can move it back into the yard right? No, now we must live with it a few days to really get a feel of how it lives. Does it get in our way. It is too long? Is it wide enough. A few days? Ok I guess.

She really likes it and decides she now she would like to get a rectangular table for our dining room. Fine I say, we will put it on "the list". The list being this semi-real, semi-imaginary list of things we want to spend money on. It is supposed to allow us to agree and prioritize any "major" purchases. We go by it about half the time. With the table now on "the list" can we move the picnic table back into the yard? Why, does it really bother you? Yes! Good then you will be more motivated to get me my new table............. I had been had! The picnic table is going no where until I produce a replacement.

She suggests I build her a table. I guess she thinks that since I built a deck, I am now qualified to build fine home furnishings. Well, as long as she doesn't mind that it looks surprising like the picnic table currently in our dining room I could build the table. I nix that idea.

After months of browsing through home magazines and local ads from furniture stores she shows me an ad from an unfinished furniture store. A large rectangular "farm house" table and a price that doesn't make me cringe. You see there is nothing "techno" about a table and therefore I don't get real excited about spending cash on it. Now a new wireless laptop for the house and you would have my interest peaked. Anyway, on the day after Thanksgiving, after having eaten my turkey upon an old wobbly picnic table we purchases the unfinished large rectangular table and I have now spent the last two days sanding and staining.

Though it will be a week or so before the table is ready to grace our dining room, last night she allowed her brother and I to carry the picnic table back to its rightful location in our back yard. I had finally won? Right, she had known what she was doing all along.......