Nothing to See Here…

Did I mention my purdy new kitchen table?  No?

I have a purdy new kitchen table.

It’s my first real kitchen table ever.  I know that seems weird, I’m in my 40s - how could I never have purchased a kitchen table before, right?  Well, for the first decade of my adulthood (which started roughly 3-4 years before I was actually an adult, ahem) I was on the early-marriage-hand-me-down plan.  I took whatever someone else was getting rid of.  Furniture, baby clothes, decor.  You name it.  I had my mom’s old pots and pans, those gingerbread mugs from Aunt Genie, the old LaZBoy Grandpa loved before he died.  That sort of thing. 

And, of course, my last house (where I lived for 13 years) had just this little galley kitchen so there wasn’t room for a kitchen table.  I had a dining room set that I bought used.  I paid $375 for it from some pish-posh rich person who probably used my hard-earned money to kindle the logs in her wood-burning stove.  But that set still sits in my dining room and has been abused by all five children (but none so severely as this last one, Miss-Chievious herself - did I mention the food coloring incident?  Oh, and this morning, my husband beckoned me into the girls’ bathroom to show me her dress that she had worn the previous day in the toilet.  She must have done that in the middle of the night because, people, it was not in the toilet when we did their bedtime routine.  She’s the devil, I tell ya.)

Where was I?

Oh, yeah - so the inexpensive, second-hand dining room table has been through the ringer and it keeps on tickin’.  In the kitchen, we had a counter-high trestle table from my parents.  Yes, even in my 40s, I still take their hand-me-downs.  Old habits die hard.  But this hand-me-down table really was only made to seat four and it was awfully crowded when we tried to have a meal on it with the five of us, and perhaps one of the big girls, or my father-in-law or some wayward child who figured we wouldn’t notice one extra.  It wasn’t good.

A few months ago, I got the bright idea to go shop for (and buy! because what fun is shopping if there is no buying!) a new kitchen table and chairs.  We shopped!  We bought!  We waited and waited for delivery.  And waited.  And waited.  It finally showed up a few weeks back, in early July I think.   You know, right after we had to pay to replace the roof and the air conditioner - the day we figured we could no longer really afford it, that was the day they delivered it.

It’s so purdy!  It’s a big ol’ heavy distressed farmhouse table.  And?  It has two end-leaves that are 18″ each to bring the table to a capacity that can even handle my herd when we’re all assembled.  I loved it.  My very-own first kitchen table chosen by me for me and there it was!

{sigh}  It was better than sex a new appliance.  (But not a new sexual appliance! Ha!)

My husband said “If that table was distressed when it came into this house, it’s going to be downright suicidal before we’re done abusing it.”  (That’s what is called foreshadowing by us literary types.)

We, of course, started having meals on it daily and that’s when I got annoyed at the grooves.  The table has big grooves running through it.  We decided to fill those grooves with peanut butter and bread crumbs and peas and lord knows what else.  OK, so it wasn’t so much a decision as an unavoidable consequence.  Each night after dinner, I wipe down the table and then I have to take a scrubbing brush to clean out these grooves.  Those grooves are already annoying the crap out of me.

The good news is if we ever run out of food, the kids can live for weeks eating the remnants of food in those grooves. 

Just recently, I noticed a white ring on the wood (right in front of my seat - I believe I’ve been implicated!) and I was puzzled.  This is my big, heavy, distressed kitchen table.  Surely it’s not such a wussy table that it would stain so easily.  This ain’t no Louis the 16th parlor table, people.  It’s a kitchen table.  From a farm.  OK, well, it wasn’t from a farm but it could have been.  And everyone knows that farms have extremely durable tables.  Right?  (If Chandler were here, he would say “Could there be any heavier use of italics in that paragraph?” but he’s not so let’s move on, shall we?)

I have a white ring on my new heavy-duty distressed durable wood farm table.  In addition to the frickin-fracken grooves. 

I called the company from which we purchased it and spoke to a customer service rep.  I’m so glad I did, too, because she was brilliant with indispensable advice.  Go get a pen and paper - I’ll wait.

Ready?

OK, she suggested we use coasters. 

I know.  I’m filing that in my IMPORTANT ADVICE file.

To be honest, I laughed and when I stopped laughing, she suggested I buy custom pads for the table.  Or perhaps have a custom sheet of glass cut to fit it.

HELLO?  All those things would ruin my genuine distressed durable farmhouse look in my kitchen.  And please don’t point out that there isn’t a farm anywhere close because, dammit, people who live in the suburbs can pretend they are old farmhouse kind of people just by buying the right table, but Christ on a Bike, you can’t go buying custom sheets of glass to put over your genuine authentic durable distressed farmhouse table.  (Don’t you like how that string of adjectives just keeps growing and growing?)

My friend, Claire, said that she has a similar table with a similar water ring and she has decided it simply adds character.  I think that’s one option.  I’m keeping that option in my back pocket for now.

First, I’m going to try to get rid of that son of a bitchin’ water stain.  I’m mixing mayonnaise with cigar ashes and coffee grounds and vinegar and toothpaste and rubbing it in with a cloth diaper and then putting a low-iron over paper towels.  That’s all the advice the Internet gave me and I always believe what I read on the Internet.  (But just in case it’s wrong, tell me how you get water rings off durable genuine distressed purdy farmhouse wood tables, please??)

Coasters.  COASTERS.  I can’t even get my kids to use utensils and she’s telling us to use coasters.  What a funny woman.  Obviously, she doesn’t know how us genuine durable distressed farmhouse mothers raise our kids. 

By the collars of their shirts, that’s how.  We raise ‘em right up off the floor by the collars of the shirt and put the fear of Mama into them.  (Especially when they shove their pretty pink dresses in the toilets.)

See my groovy table??

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