Rachel's Dowry

When I moved to New York City, I brought exactly my weight in stuffs. I know this because of the scales at the airport and the overweight luggage fees I was charged. For the first few months of my new life, I had some clothes, bedding, one coffee mug, and one kitchen knife to my name. That was it.

Some sympathetic friends, a move to my present apartment, and a few good street finds greatly increased my material worth. In dowry terms, I almost had enough to score a husband from a good family: bed, couch, bookshelf, end tables, plastic samurai sword. Things were good and getting better.

Just last week, I finally achieved my greatest furniture triumph to date: the dining room table and chairs. Unlike end tables and lamp shades, a large table isn't something you can find on the street. Believe me, I looked hard. I didn't want to pay the $100-plus it would've cost to eat my meals sitting down at a table like a normal person. Instead, I stubbornly stood at my kitchen counter for six months, eating in front of the microwave because it was too much trouble to walk the three feet to the sink.

I'm a classy broad, as you can tell.

I scored this lovely hardwood table and matching chairs from a friend moving back to Hawaii. Beautiful, aren't they? Anything in the free to $50 range is beautiful to me, but these are especially lovely because I now own a) too much furniture to move on my own, and b) enough to furnish my own apartment, both markers, in my mind, of true adulthood.