sisalik | "Don't you dare make this place domestic!"

Thirty minutes ago, Martha Stewart laid a manicured hand to her bosom, sat down, and felt a disturbance in the Force. This is because I was standing on my couch (with shoes on, no less), wrestling with both a Boxer and a huge heavy slipcover. Now I have a couch that looks better than it did, if you'll work with my loose definition of "better" as "covered with a slipcover that is rucked up in places and too big for the couch it's covering and also maybe upside down but the cloth itself is rather pretty."

And it is rather pretty. The base cloth is a bit darker than a Coyotes red, and - to keep with the color theme - it has a darker than Dallas goldy leaf pattern sticking up in some kind of stiff yet fluffy velvet stuff. It's not me, really - the pattern is more Pier One, and you know I'd prefer batik-print canvas loud enough to daze a Deadhead - but it's an improvement.

Even if it's on upside-down. Which it might be. The one thing I know for sure is that it's not inside-out. I couldn't figure the fucking thing out, and it's not like it comes with instructions, and until Colby pulled the thing out of his trunk and offered it to me I'd never even considered owning a slipcover. All I saw was a piece of cloth about half the size of the room, with elastic stuck through part of it, and ties sticking off every-which direction, and two odd seamed-together puffs of cloth on each end that didn't align with any part of my couch, and I'm in a considerable amount of pain right now so I'm not thinking straight anyway beyond "I want to put the pretty fuzzy thing on my couch" and... eh. A FEMA tarp would have been an improvement. Colby can put the stupid thing on right the next time he comes over. Never said I did domestic.

Nobody who has met the two should be shocked by this: when Riley tries to "help" and I tell her to back off and let me work, she does. When my mom tries to "help" and I tell her to back off and let me work, I wind up tripping over her foot a minute later. (Riley, meanwhile, is well out of the way, having gone to bring me her farting duck, because if I won't play the LET'S JUMP ON THE COUCH THAT'S COVERED IN CLOTH! game, we can play a different one.)

So now, my big dumb dog and her farting duck and I are going to sit on the couch with the rumpled upside-down slipcover and watch the birthday present that