This afternoon when I was walking Scarlet I noticed that there was a lilac colored sofa, a blue chair, a broken full length mirror, and a plant sitting by the recycling bins for our apartment complex. I almost took the the plant, but we don't need more half dead plants so I left it for someone else. I mentioned the chair to Jon because we are looking for cheap (or free, even better) furniture for our balcony now that it's spring. In fact, we spend all last spring and summer going "we should really get furniture for the balcony" in case the furniture fairy overheard us. But he didn't make any moves to the furniture so I forgot about it.

On our way home tonight (had Mexican) we walked past it. The chair and the plant where gone and I really don't need a broken full length mirror, but the sofa was still there. A preliminary check and sniff test was positive-the fabric on the bottom was torn, but other than that it looked fine. Didn't smell like cat pee and no stains.

"What if somebody died on it?" Jon said
"So? Free sofa!" I replied

Maybe it was the margaritas talking, but I said we should carry it back. It's a solidly built sofa, which is a good thing in a long run but not such a great thing when you are trying to carry it across the deserted courtyard at half past nine at night. I manged to help Jon carry it the 200 feet to our building, but there was still the two floors to carry it up. At that moment our angel appeared. It was one of our neighbors and he told Jon that he had gotten "a message from God" to help us drag it up the stairs. The men pulled it up whilst I ran upstairs to open the door and lock Scarlet in the spare room, lest the excitement overwhelm her. But our adventure wasn't done yet.

Not by a country mile.

Jon decreed that instead of trying to get it though our front door, the foyer, and then again out the balcony it would be easier to get it over the stairwell balcony and over our railing. Yes, it would be a lot less maneuvering, but we had to pass it over a gap with a three-floors straight down kind of learning curve. Where this is day time and I had five good men (and a star to sail them by) I would not have hesitated, but as it is just Jon and myself I was a bit nervous. Also, if the sofa fell that wouldn't be the biggest problem-it would crush a bunch of bikes too.

Jon pushed it over the railing, over the gap, to myself on the other side. I usually never go over our railing for the reason I'm worried I will suddenly lose all sense of balance and sense and just topple off the balcony. After several terse moments ("Oh my God don't let go of the sofa!!!!! Seriously!") Jon finagled it over, where I pulled it to a secure teetering position, hopped over the fence and ran inside to let Jon in, then ran back to sofa in case it decided to plummet over the edge.

"Be careful! Oh oh oh!" So Jon decided to push from the safer side. We got it in place though, and it cost us nothing but a few abrasions on the back of my left hand where I scarped it against the brickwork. In retrospect, that was completly avoidable.

It is a really nice sofa though. I think it's suede, it isn't Ikea, I think it came from a real furniture store.