Rats in a Furniture Store.

Our barren living room is a constant reminder that we want to move. We sold our couches in December and bought two excercise balls to sit on, thinking that if we absolutely had to sit in the living room and watch TV, we'd do some sit-ups too. HAHAHA. Ahhhhh. Anyway. All the gifts we got from our wedding are still packed up in boxes and every couple of weeks we pack away more stuff... all with the hope that one of those fabled jobs will land in our lap and we can get out of Mickey's PeeWee'esque playhouse. Wanting to make a move as quickly and painlessly as possible, we plan to sell pretty much anything and everything we can to get out of here. That said, I occassionally enjoy a trip through the furniture store where I can make a mental escape for a few minutes to owning an actual house and trying to imagine how I would decorate it.
Saturday night we were making a quick stop at Starbucks... an odd choice, because we NEVER go there. On the way in, we stopped at American Signature furniture where we made it exactly half-way around the store before being approached by a friendly gentleman asking several questions about our reason for visiting. We made small talk and answered his questions fairly pointedly, not trying to loop ourselves into any long-winded sales pitch-- but loop we did.
Somehow we were swept up in a whirlpool of couch and bedframe comparisons, mattress demonstrations, wood grain analyzing, and comfort assesments... before I knew it, an hour had passed... the store was closed and this man still wouldn't let us leave. He wouldn't take no for an answer. He wanted to run our credit, set up accounts, hold items, get ten percent down. We didn't even know what we were buying! I've never felt more cornered... like a rat... a rat with no furniture and no cheese to spend on it.

In the end, it took a combined effort of desperate "no's" and "we really, really were just looking... we can't do this right nows" to get us out of the store with a business card and none to happy salesman.

Both of us quite shook up, we continued to our orignal destination, Starbucks where Mike promptly dropped a tall carmel latte on the floor. Now that's what I call a Saturday.