In conclusion, we bought a table with a leaf that seats six.

I'd thought about "forever" (or "FOR-ehhh-ver," as the "Sandlot" boys say) before I married Dave.

But it's this building of forever that continues to surprise me.

We wanted to get a new, bigger table for a while, but the scent of our freshly burned kitchen table made me long for a new one. Now. As in right now. Yesterday would be better. Every time I walked by the table I could picture it on fire. And I still smelled that smoky scent, even though Dave said I was just crazy. Maybe.

But Dave likes buying things, too, so we set out this weekend to jumpstart our search.

First stop: A furniture store that's going out of business. We happen upon these really, really cool tables ... for $1300. It's about $900 more than I would ideally like to have spent, so we kept walking. We passed the cool walnut tables. Continued on by the high, bar-like tables. We stopped in front of the typical "Just Like You Remember From Your Mother's Kitchen!" tables.

Dave continued walking, but I was seeing the wisdom in the matron-friendly tables.

Good God, I was thinking, there's room for six people at this table. And wooden seats, not cloth. Easy clean-up. It was like a ... natural train of thought.

Dave pointed at a cool looking one, more adapted to sitting in the middle of some uptown loft than (what the realtors would call) a "quaint" house in Oshkosh. I pointed at my choice. There was some salesman heckling, and we left tableless.

"Why didn't you like that one?" he asked.

I looked around ... "Um. Because there are only four spots."

"It's just the two of us."

"We're going to have this table more than a couple of years." Hint, hint.

Dave stared at me and I swear I saw a lightbulb go off. "O-o-o-h. O-h." You should note that's an "O" sound and not an "oo" sound.

And that's when we got in the truck and became immediately more interested in the passing scenery.

"But ..."

"If we have a set of our parents over, that leaves only one spare seat, if there are three of US," I said.

"Oooh. Yeah."

I am so ... married.