Night at the Auction

Our house is mostly set up. We have been here 2 years come Thanksgiving Day. The big stuff is covered. When one first moves into a place, one tends to bring all their old stuff. Unless distance is a factor, it is cheaper to do so. It may not fit perfectly, but it will at least be OK for the time being.

That is where we are now.

We have soft fir floors, a big puppy and a growing group of friends. Something's got to give. And so far it's been our floors, especially around the dining room table. We had a rug under the table to protect the floors; however, the rug was too small for the space (it fit the living room of the little guest house on 2nd street in Tucson, if that tells you anything). Chairs slid back from the table. Floors scratched.

And then we got an email from a friend yesterday telling us about a once-a-year rug auction happening last night. Pennies on the dollar, they said. We went.

The dimensions of our room quickly ruled out many of them. Our dream rug was 8x10, with allowances of 7-9'x9-10'. There were 10 rugs or so within those limits. We had 40 minutes to check them all out before the auction started. So there we were on our hands and knees flying through rugs. We found two we liked. The first was pretty and very well made. We liked it better than the second. Apparently others thought so, too, as it quickly went out of our price range when the auction started. "But I didn't even get to bid on it", said Ken. Oh well. The second was the 230th rug. At 100 rugs auctioned per hour, we knew we were going to be there a while. I had already let go since Ken wasn't as thrilled with it as he was with the first rug. He liked it but the weave wasn't as tight. It wasn't as 'this'. It wasn't as 'that'. I let go of the rug. But then when they held it up at auction, Ken liked it again. We set our price limit well before the auction and were pleased when we won the rug for less than the estimated price. Excited but scared. It has blue in it. More blue than in our whole house combined. We would have to see it in place. Ken also loved and bid on a smaller rug for the foyer, but that went out of our price range and was the final rug of the sale.

We paid, loaded up in the pouring rain and brought our new rug home. Suffice it to say, it looks great and Ken loves it. Phew. Kinley and Hughes both think it smells funny. So do I. Musty, which will go away with time. And so our night at the auction came to an end. Protected floors, curious pets and a semi-content Ken who wished he bid a little extra for that last rug that got away.