Who knew the hardest part about shopping for family room furniture would be finding the right pillows?

Greg and I both agreed we needed some decorative throw pillows to spruce up our three legged couch and our chipped away at cement boat dock, improvising as a coffee table.

So Greg came to find me in the store and said, “Guess what? I found the perfect pillows.”

Whenever he says, “I found the perfect thing” it usually means it’s something orange and would offend 50% of the population.

I followed him to the pillow aisle and spotted two neon orange and silver pillows propped up (he obviously deserved bonus points for presentation) in front of all the others.

Hmmmm.

Greg: What, you don’t like them? You know I love orange.

This is true. I do know he loves orange but loving orange can’t be all consuming. You can love an orange. You can love an orange t-shirt. You can love orange stucco on your home. Just because you love orange, doesn’t mean you should love every shade of orange and not necessarily on a pillow.

Neon pillows on my three legged couch? Not on my watch Greg. Not on new pillow day.

He could tell I didn’t love the pillows and tried to convince me how they would work because we were in love. Or something like that.

I held up two pillows that would work with the eclectic arrangement of half-broken furniture we had thrown together and he politely gave the thumbs down face.

We stood in the pillow aisle hugging our choices, he with his neon orange, me with my yellow and grey (am I right?). It was a Mexican stand-off of down and neither one of us was willing to unzip their silk cases and let the feathers fly.
I calmly set my pillows down in a peace offering and suggested Greg do the same.

We agreed to look at another store. We agreed there would be more pillows. We agreed there would be more shopping.

It was this last point that was so conflicting for Greg.

We walked up to the cashier with his orange t-shirt, orange bathing suit, orange key chain and orange  beret and he realized I wasn’t backing down and we would be driving to the next store and shopping some more.

Greg: Did you really like those other pillows because we can get whatever you want.

I can’t believe we chose a three legged couch, cement diving board (?) and two broken patio chairs with less of a discussion but there was no way I was going to buy pillows I knew he didn’t like so every time the word orange crept into a conversation he could say, “Orange you glad we bought those ugly yellow and grey pillows?”