Brown Elephant in the Room

We have this enormous chair. It seats 1.5 people very comfortably and comes with a matching ottoman. But it's in a rather interesting brown/olive green pattern fabric that only works in huge spaces. The chair was a gift. It used to be in my brother-in-law's 2-story huge family room, but then they replaced it with a leather one and we needed comfy manly size furniture for our basement (aka the man cave because there is a bar in it) so the chair migrated over to our house. It used to live down the basement. Two basement misfortunes later (of a wet variety) and the chair was rescued to the upstairs living room. It didn't exactly go with anything (we have modern interior) but it was comfortable to sit in to read a book to our son or relax with a cuppa. Sometimes I would move it from one corner to another corner trying to improve upon living room layout (still work in progress).

In the spring, we got a leather daybed that fit perfectly into the bay window of our living room. The Behemoth, as my mom named the chair, felt out of place since the daybed had very sleek contemporary lines. Then I got it into my head that our family room would be better off with a console for the TV instead of a large entertainment center/bookcase/storage. After a long search and driving all over half the state, we ended up with a nice sleek white number. Which wasn't exactly what I wanted because it was white and everything else is maple, but nobody makes maple furniture anymore. Plus our couch is on the olive green side and there is a brown leather club chair as well. So one morning, after pacing from living room to family room, I swapped (thanks to furniture gliders) The Behemoth and the club chair. Now we had sleek and modern in the living room and comfy in the family room. Forgot to mention that The Behemoth arrived with matching couch pillows, which were the most stiff pillows ever. But I put them on the couch anyway and a white tray on my maple coffee table and everything sort of matched. 

Last friday we got new furniture for the living room. We got a chair that matches the daybed in color and has a very slim profile and a console to go behind it. Kind of a layered look, totally works. So the leather club chair needed to go back to the family room and comfy Behemoth back down to the man cave. While my husband was getting the furniture, I was moving chairs around. The Behemoth only made it as far as the kitchen.

When my husband arrived, he made two comments: "Aha! I see you've been busy!" and, "We have a brown elephant in our kitchen." We sat up the new stuff, marveled at it, then he decided that he was going to take some small furniture from the basement to goodwill to make room for the brown chair. He was itching to get everything finished, even though I told him that the chair sitting in the middle of the kitchen did not bother me because I knew he would need to ask one of his friends to come and help carry it down. 

On saturday morning I went to work and did not return until after 1 pm. Eight hours later, after Danny was put to bed and I was relaxing with my cup of tea on the couch in the family room, my husband asked if I noticed anything different about the room. I looked around: toy were put away, there wasn't that much clutter on the coffee table, we got a new Netflix. I said: "We got a new movie." 

"A new movie? Is that what you noticed?" he replied.

"Yeah?" 

"How about that the chair is not in the kitchen?"

I look around: The Behemoth and the ottoman are gone. "What? Did Rick come over?"

"Nope."

Now I'm baffled. This thing is like 300lbs, how did he get it downstairs?

"Gravity," was the response. Now I'm picturing huge holes in the drywall of the basement stairs. I ask if the walls are damaged. "Nope, I rolled it. You should go see it, it's all set up. Looks like a throne, under that Russian flag." 

"I can't believe I did not notice that it was gone!" I'm so baffled by this.

"I was waiting for you to notice, but you weren't saying anything and it's been like eight hours so I decided to tell you." My poor husband – for eight hours he was looking for recognition of his monumental efforts of safely moving this enormous piece of american furniture down the basement all by himself and got nothing! Me, the person that notices everything, totally missed the mysterious disappearance of The Behemoth from the middle of the kitchen. I had no idea how that happened. Until now.

You see, I work part time retail at a mall. It is the end of the holiday season. The parking lot was completely full this weekend and driving around the mall was dangerous to one's car and health. I barely got out of the lot in one piece. It was 1 in the afternoon. Shortly before I was done with my shift, I got a text from my husband stating that he was taking Danny to get his haircut. At the mall. The same mall I work at. The same mall with no parking and crazy people. I got home (nerve-wrecking experience), opened the door and the first thing I saw was my freshly-shorn son. All I wanted to know how did they managed to get in and out of the mall in one piece! No wonder I missed the chair being gone! I was concentrating on Danny's head! One sideburn is longer than the other, by the way. He said the clippers tickled so he moved. Ah, kid trumps chair any time.