When You Assume

There's that old phrase about when you assume.    Today I did some assuming.   A long time ago, in a land far, far away from the current pandemic environment, I decided to redo our living room.   The furniture we had in there was circa before not only my children were born, but before my husband and I were together. 

When we built our house we put the sofas we had in the living room and they were fine.  Some day, I told myself, I'd redo the room, but for now, we had a brand new house and the furniture would just have to do.   It fit well and it served us for many years, but it was time to do the room over.   

Through a concatenation of events, I was working with Susan, who knows what works and what doesn't work.   She steered me in the right direction, decisions were made and orders were placed.   Last year.  Way last year before lockdown.  

For a while, I forgot about the order, and then it looked like it might arrive by Christmas, although we missed that by a long shot.  Yesterday we moved the sofas out of the living room and today, chairs, a sofa and end tables arrived.   Another chair and the large, coffee table that sits in the middle of the room, is still to come.   

Susan came over with some lamps we could decide on.   She had lamp shades to go on them and we started trying things out, moving them around.   We had an idea of what we wanted, but nothing felt quite right.   In order to get a feel for what she was looking for, I went up to my daughter's room and got the two lamps on her nightstands.    

The lamps there went with the guest room furniture that is now her bedroom furniture.   They're not children-type lamps, they're heavy, tall metal lamps with larger lampshades.   When I brought them down, Susan said that was just what the end tables needed.  They were right.   They fit.   I said that was great, that we could just use them.   

Susan laughed and said, "I didn't know we could have gone shopping in. your house for lamps."   I told her I didn't know that was an option.  She asked if my daughter would mind and I said I didn't think so because she couldn't see the light from them and she probably didn't know much about them since they didn't factor into her world view much. 

When my daughter came home we told her to go feel around the living room and see what the new items were but to be sure she had clean hands since she'd been eating a snack.   My husband and I headed to the basement to get some work done. 

I swear, it was less than two minutes later that my daughter roared down from the top of the stairs, stomping as she descended the stairs, "HOW DARE YOU TAKE MY LAMPS!"

Uh oh.   

I did what any good parent does when their child is upset by something that will pass.   My daughter was laying on the chair, crying piteously, saying "Bob and Bill" were her best friends (it seems like all the inanimate objects she bonds with have these names.)  And I lied.  I lied to her and told her the lamps had been planned for the living room redo since before she moved into the bedroom and that I didn't realize she had such strong feelings for the lamps. 

Then I tried the next parental tactic: bribery.   I told her we could go to the store and she could pick out lamps for her room that she liked.   Bribery got me nowhere though.   So we went for the third tactic, and this one worked: distraction.   Her father went jumping on the trampoline with her and five minutes later, she was laughing.  

I wonder though, will the lamps come back to haunt me?   My daughter still is upset about the river rock we didn't let her tack home from Hawaii. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son still has stuffed animals all over the floor of his room.   He got the dog to get under a pile of them last night.   My husband sent me a picture and I didn't notice the dog's head sticking out from the center until I'd looked at the picture for a bit.  Tonight my son was rolling around on the floor with all the stuffed animals.   They seem to make him happy.  For years he wanted nothing to do with stuffed animals. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   On Thursday, my daughter competes competitively in the national braille challenge.   She has practiced with me administering the test for her.   She did fairly well, but if she wants to be nationally competitive, she's going to need to slow down, take her time and think.   She knows more answers than she got right, she was just in a hurry to get sone so she could have lunch or go out and play.