The Curried Couch

For about a year now, I’ve been trying to locate some inexpensive furniture for my garage/office out here in the back 40 of the Pastry family estate. What’s a garage/office? you may well ask. Well it’s more comfortable than it sounds. The previous owners of our house ran a hot sauce business out of this little building, which they built at the back of the lot, next to the house’s original 1-car garage. Technically (and, I’m sure, as far as the Louisville zoning and health commissions were aware) this place is and always has been a garage. However until the Pastry family arrived, it wasn’t used that way. When the former owners occupied it, the parking area was filled with hot sauce making and bottling equipment, and the third of the structure closest to the house was walled off, insulated, carpeted and made into an office. It’s got windows with shades, a drop ceiling, AC and heat, and it’s the location from which I am blogging to you now. I know it as the Joe Pastry Global Operations Center, but the wife simply calls it “The Man Room”.

Since we moved in two years ago, I’ve wanted to cozy this 10′ x 20′ space up a bit. A small couch, I always thought, would go a long way toward making it feel like a real room versus a mostly empty fallout shelter. However couches are expensive, and used ones…well, I’ve never really wanted to go there. Sure you can find them in lots of places, but you never know whose cat may have used it as an alternate litter box, if you know what I’m saying. Still, I’ve scanned Craigslist off and on over the last year, hoping for some sort of miracle. The day before yesterday I found it: an ad for a brand new love seat, still in the plastic, never used. No smoke, no pets…for a hundred bucks. Sounded like just the thing I was after, so, yesterday I went to have a look. It was exactly as the nice Indian fellow had advertised. He’d bought it about a month ago when he arrived from Chennai, he said, and never unwrapped it. Now he was being transferred to a new job somewhere else, and didn’t want to move it. It wasn’t Chippendale of course, but c’mon man, it’s garage furniture. We haggled a bit, I paid him ninety dollars and he helped me get it into the back of my SUV.

Well it’s been about twenty hours now, and I can tell you that the couch is working out even better than I’d hoped. Not only does it fit in perfectly with the decor I have going out here, it’s made my office smell like a really, really good Indian restaurant. Plastic wrapping doesn’t keep out spicy cooking odors, it seems. I suppose I should have put that together when Mr. Couch introduced me to his attractive young wife. She didn’t seem to speak much English, but judging from the aromas in here in my office this morning, she is one hell of a cook. I wonder if I can invite myself back over to their house for dinner one night this week? Failing that I’m certain to be craving carry-out all month.