Quest for a Rocking Chair

The question Brian and I get most these days is, "So, do you have the baby's room all ready?" In short, sort of. We've ordered the crib, the walls are painted, and we found a decent dresser for a good price. Now we are trying to find a rocking chair that will fit in the 9' x 9' room. Basic wooden rocking chairs are evidently not popular anymore. Instead stores are selling a lot of big upholstered chairs that happen to rock. I'd much prefer one of those, as they look really, really comfortable, but they also look really, really big and are more expensive than a standard rocker.

As a last resort, I've checked Craigslist. I'm starting to understand why my favorite stores don't sell wooden rocking chairs. Because wooden rocking chairs remind people of these two women:

Granny Clampett

or...

Mrs. Bates

Are rocking chairs really hillbilly? Or just downright creepy? Judging from what I've found on Craigslist, they can be one of many things:

Historically Scary

This one makes me think of a scary old Confederate wife who was mean to her grandchildren in the 1950s. Isn't this the chair Scarlett O'Hara's father sat in when he was going insane in the middle third of Gone With the Wind?

Crime Scene Scary

Are those streaks of blood? Who would give a chair a distressed finish with red on white other than a sociopath? I do not care to visit this person's home to check out this bloodstained chair in person.

Smelly Scary

I can smell this one from here. Okay, so this isn't wooden, but it is faded, misshapen and looks like someone's Great Aunt Faye put a lot of TV watching years into it, alongside her many cats. Who may or may not have peed on it. This chair's owner wants $120 for it.

Okay, so maybe we don't buy a used rocking chair on Craigslist after all. The charming antique piece I was envisioning is apparently still in someone's grandma's house waiting for her to pass on so her offspring can make a quick 50 bucks off of it. And maybe, if I keep looking, we can find a new wooden chair that won't make me think of the final scenes of Psycho or make me want to tie it to the top of our car for our next road trip.

One Man's Trash...

I've become a lot more budget conscious since becoming unemployed, not to mention I'm on a new "less is more" kick when it comes to everything to do with our house and what we buy. As my favorite comedian of all time, George Carlin, once said, "a house is just your pile of stuff with a cover on it." He also goes on to say the only reason people move is because they just have "too much stuff - they need a bigger place to store it all." (Okay, some people move because of job transfers, or having another child, or to escape a crime-ridden neighborhood, but in general the "too much stuff" theory works for me, for now.)

Carlin also did a bit once about garage sales that I can't for the life of me find online. His point was that garage sales are basically one person saying, "I do not need all this crap. But I bet if I put it out in front of my house with a price tag on it, someone will pay me for it and take it home with them." Garage sales are just a pile of other people's stuff they don't want anymore.

This past Saturday, I drove by at least eight garage sales. Slowly. Curious to see if they were selling jogger strollers or high quality toys for bargain prices. But something kept me from parking and going into look. One problem was that I only had $4 in cash in my wallet at the time. The other was that I was afraid of getting sucked into all the deals to be had and would walk out with another vase (50 cents!) or a stack of CDs (I love hits of the 80s!) much like the ones I just cleaned out of our den closet. So I kept going, probably missing out on a fabulous deal on someone else's unnecessary crap but perhaps on some fantastic, gently used baby item that would actually be put to good use at our house in the coming year. Maybe I can be talked into becoming the garage sale type. Until then, I'll always hear George Carlin in the back of my mind, telling me I've already got too much stuff.