As I’ve written many, many times before, I love, love having sons. They are funny and sweet and weird and delicious and dopey and if I had known they were so great I would have tossed a few more on the pile back when Kyle and I were piling them up, as it were.
However, there are a few challenges that come with being the only girl in a house full of bros. No one wants to go for a spontaneous pedicure. Everyone wants to wrestle. And, possibly most disappointingly, the number of people who care about pillows at any given time in my household is always, always one.
“I can’t go on any longer with these pillows,” I said to my boys at breakfast on Sunday.
“What pillows?” My fourteen-year-old asked after a while.
“Those pillows,” I said, obviously gesturing to the démodé and passé throw pillows on the couch. “They are démodé and passé and have created a visual mustiness to the whole living room. I need to freshen things up.”
Kyle, Fourteen, and Ten looked around and seemed genuinely surprised that we had a living room.
“I’m going shopping this afternoon for new pillows,” I said. “Would any of you like to join?”
“Heck no,” Fourteen said.
“Heck no,” Ten said.
“Don’t be rude to Mom,” Kyle said. “And no, thank you.”
“Your loss,” I said. “Because I’m going to HomeGoods and HomeGoods has awesome stuff.”
That afternoon, I went to HomeGoods for some awesome stuff. After wandering through the “uncategorized seasonal awesome stuff + food” section I went back to the “possibly bedroom but also possibly living room and maybe possibly just rooms in general + 4th of July” section where the pillows were located. And by “located,” I mean scattered over several shelving units and endcaps and middle displays. I spent fifteen minutes wandering up and down and back and forth and roundabout the aisles to ensure I had mentally identified and catalogued every pillow in the store.
With the pillows now identified and catalogued, it was time for some smushing. I spent another fifteen minutes wandering up and down and back and forth and roundabout the aisles to hand-scrunch the pillows I had mentally shortlisted as being appropriate to freshen and revitalize my couch/living room/home/entirety of my experience in North Dakota. In my original wanderings, I had come across a woman doing her own wandering; this time, when I wandered past her again, I said hello.
“Great day for pillows!” I said, squishing my hand into a pillow to check its firmness.
“It sure is!” She said, karate-chopping a pillow to do the same.
I found lots of perfect pillows and now needed to determine which perfect pillows were the most perfect color. I walked around again, picking a vanilla matching set, putting them down for an apricot matching set, and then putting those down so I could go and get a cart because two was too many pillows to carry. On my way back to the section with my cart, I found a set of candles that I hadn’t realized I needed until I saw them.
I picked up the original vanilla matching set and decided to compare them to a different sand-colored matching set a few aisles over. My pillow compadre was already there comparing her own perfect matching ultramarine pillows to other perfect matching ultramarines. I set all four of my vanilla pillows on a table and then picked up a few accent pillows and put them in front and made a little display.
“I think you should go with the textured and the woven,” she said, gesturing to my situation.
“I think you’re right,” I said. “And I think you should go with the floral and the stripes.”
“Yes, I will,” she said.
I put my pillows in my cart and wandered up and down and back and forth and roundabout the aisles to confirm I hadn’t missed some perfect secret pillows somewhere. Satisfied, I grabbed a package of cocktail napkins because I decided in that moment that my “thing” this summer would be cocktail napkins, and made my purchases.
At home, I packed up my crappy old living room pillows and put them in the basement storage closet, set my fabulous new pillows on the couch, zazzed and rezazzed the whole arrangement with blankets casually tossed here and there, put some flowers in a vase, and patted myself on the back for being basically the greatest homemaker in the universe.
The whole time I was working, Ten was sitting on the couch eating popcorn and watching TV.
“What do you think of the living room?” I asked him.
Ten looked around and seemed genuinely surprised to find himself sitting on the couch.
“Nice,” he said. He picked up my zazzed blanket and wrapped it around his head like E.T. and flopped unceremoniously onto a new pillow.
“It really freshens things up,” I said, plumping the pillow around him.
“Okay,” he said.
I asked Kyle to take a picture of the new pillows and he put three of them together and zazzed them up in his own way and I’m very proud of him. That’s the photo above.
This week on North Dakota Today, we talked about Irene Sprague my Nice Person of the Week, as well as a group for women who love adventures (and friendships!). (Valley News Live)
Grand Forks’ Lucas Kindseth is an international hero. (Fargo Forum)
In non-North Dakota news (but very Amanda news, because if you know me in real life you know that I LOVE finding other Amandas and have talked about starting an Amanda Club), an 11-year-old named Kirsty is on a hunt for every other Kirsty in the world. (Nice News)
The Williston Basin Career and Technical Center hosted the first aviation skills competition as a part of a pilot program to create…well, pilots. (Fargo Forum)
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