The rocking chair, part 2

The other news to start the new year is that my rocking chair is finished! The gentleman who has been building it for me called Brant yesterday to tell him to come pick it up. We were so excited!

Brant loaded the beautiful loaner rocking chair into the car and came back an hour later with the new rocking chair... my own chair.

Now, I should stop and say right now that I was never involved in the making of this new chair. Brant went over several times to talk with the man and check on its progress, but I never did - I think we thought it would be a great surprise if I only saw the finished product. Not sure why we thought that was a great idea....

The rocking chair is ugly. Hideously, hideously ugly. I am almost crying as I write this and I feel like such a jerk. Kind, nice grandfather type offers to build me my own rocking chair and spends months working on it and all I can say is it's ugly... I really am an ungrateful jerk.

I loved the first chair he built. It was a classic, dark, hard wood with straight lines. A few months ago Brant did mention that he wouldn't be able to use the same wood as he didn't have enough dry to build a chair. My thought at the time was to me, a tree is a tree, so who cares what type of wood is used?

But, ah ha - we are in Papua, the end of the world, and the land of exotic and weird stuff. The chair Brant brought in yesterday was bright RED. Dark burnt orange-brick would probably be a more correct term, though the little boys' toy fire trucks do actually match pretty good. At first I thought he has just made a mistake staining it, then come to find out the chair isn't stained at all - it's the real color of the wood. Who knew there were such ugly trees out there? :)

And it's not straight - I love straight lines on rocking chairs - not frilly, curving, carved things. But it's curvy and carved... he was trying something new.

Needless to say it was kinda a crummy day. I was trying to hard to like the chair - and I AM thankful for it - it rocks nicely and is well built. I really appreciate his effort and total selflessness in building it for me. But I don't like it. :(

The whole chair episode led to a rough evening for me and Brant. It occurred to me that we have dated or been married for almost 13 years and he did not know my tastes well enough to know all those months of checking in on the rocking chair that it wasn't exactly the type of rocker I was dreaming about. I know it's not a conversation most couples have "What's your dream rocking chair look like?" but my whole personality doesn't exactly scream "I love frilly, odd, glossy-looking orange things" :)

Anyways, not going to take the time to post a picture of the new rocking chair. :( We might try sanding it down and staining it, though I'm not quite sure we can cover the red. Brant offered black spray paint. :) Will see. :)