Shared Core Experience

Have been rather in need of a new dining room table these past many months. We've had a perfectly good and sensible table, painted blue and then scuffed and spoiled by so many destructive children, but every day it has wobbled and swayed a little bit more. “I'll just tighten it up” Matt kept saying. And I would nod understandingly.

So then, two days ago, as we sat around the remains of an excellent lunch, or I guess I should be calling it Dinner, Matt was scrolling through Craig's List, in the way one does, you know, hoping there'll be something interesting. In my case I was hoping he'd find a new set of drawers because the ones we laboriously put together in January have already broken and all the clothes are in heaps all over. But he didn't. Instead he saw this vast, immense, capacious (sorry, I've been watching too much Word Girl) dining room table for practically no money at all. Well, a little money. But really practically no money in the whole scheme of the universe. So he immediately texted and we snatched it out from under the nose of someone who'd arranged to come see it today. Feel sort of guilty. But Not Really because it's so vast and sturdy and wonderful.

Basically it takes up the whole room.

Of course, the other table is now shoved into the living room, where, shockingly, it doesn't really go well. Would cope with it but, well, who even has time to figure out what to do with the second table. I guess other people might figure out a plan before hand, but we're not those kind of people. We're the kind of people who end up with two dining room tables in the middle of our regular living space, formally referred to by me as The Level.

So anyway, now we can really indulge in those Shared Core Experiences that NPR admonished the American Public to try in the early 90s. What's that, you ask. What's a Shared Core Experience? It's Dinner. And it's happening here in the afternoon.