I must be losing my mind

I did something very uncharacteristic of a nitpicky clean freak.

I bought used upholstered furniture off of craigslist yesterday. I know. It's disgusting. I had no idea who had used it, if it had bugs in it, if it was mildewy or whatever. Trust me when I tell you that this kept me up worrying last night.

We have a very teeny-tiny little living room, but our two chairs and ottoman from the Baltimore house weren't cutting it. We had 7 dinner guests over on Saturday night and I realized that we needed more seating.

A full-sized couch was out of the question because of space, but a love seat would work. So I checked furniture companies and new love seats seem to cost a lot of money to me when I know that we're going to use it for one year and then it'll go into storage for who knows how long.

So I decided to check craigslist. The very first listing was in Summerville and while the plaid love seat was ugly, it looked to be in good shape, the owner said he could deliver it and the price was $40. Yes, you read that correctly. Forty smackeroos. What a deal. The owner told me that he was moving back to Colorado next week and just needed to get rid of it, that it was fairly new-ish, that it was in fact in decent shape and that he could deliver it to my house tomorrow.

Sold, I said.

For $40, I figured even if it was awful when he got here, I'd just pay him the $40 and tell him to drive a mile down the road to the dump where he could leave it at the swap shop. I also consoled myself with the fact that we use used upholstered furniture at every overseas posting when we get assigned embassy furniture. We have no idea who has used it before us, and that's sort of gross now that I think about it.

But then I started thinking that this guy could be some freako murderer who preys on stay-at-home moms by selling cheap love seats that he offers to deliver to their homes. So I asked my sister-in-law if she could come over as backup because surely two of us could take him down if he tried anything funny.

But just to be safe, I hid my pocketbook out-of-sight and put a hammer in the kitchen (seriously) in case I needed a weapon.

Charlotte and I had nothing to worry about. He was a nice young man whose dad was in the Navy and they were all moving back to Colorado. So for $40, I have my "new" love seat and I didn't need to wield my weapon.

I have used a ridiculous amount of Lysol on the love seat just to make sure that I kill 99.9% of germs as the Lysol label promises, and tomorrow I'm buying a new slipcover since I sent to storage all our slipcovers that we use on that government-owned, pre-used furniture overseas! After tomorrow, there will not be such a good-looking $40 love seat anywhere else!