Desperately Seeking Salem

I’ve been talking to some of my young mother friends, and we’ve stumbled upon a tired family truism that, like all parenting discoveries,  may be old news to you but revelatory to the new parent:

A new couch improves your life by 150%.

We finally found said new couch in Salem, but before I get to that, let me tell you about our old couch.

Our old couch came from a second-hand store in Iowa City and, at just two seats wide, was small enough to fit in a tiny student apartment. You might call that a love seat, but when it’s all you’ve got, you, too, might couch your phrasing a little differently. Ours was grey and lovingly cat-proof and it got us through six seasons of LOST. But there wasn’t a whole lotta lovin’ going on there.

Old Grey Couch couldn’t stand up to late nights with the baby, though. After two months of periodically sleeping on the couch with our little lamb, my husband and I started to look a little crumpled, so we went looking for a replacement at our usual stops for consignment furniture, including Encore Consignment in Salem.

Adam fell in love with a couch there. It was purple and plush and probably would have taken up our entire living room. He  named it “Grimace” and was sure we’d catch it when its price dropped to 250 bucks two days later.

On the day we went to pick Grimace up, he was gone — snatched up by a lady who had arrived an hour before the store opened.

For the next few weeks, we made some sad trips to Portland, where we connived with lesser couches and were lured, however fleetingly, but the prospects of a new couch. And Adam continued to talk about the fabled purple Couch That Got Away.

A new couch! We haven’t bought anything but mattresses new… but considering the beating our old grey couch took in the four years that we had her, we began to consider the idea more and more. It would be our first major furniture purchase as a married couple.

Being stingy recyclers, we were feeling kind of torn, so we started to tell ourselves stories about why one might settle for something new.

There was that time when we pulled grey couch out of storage and found a dead mouse under a cushion…

So yes, we found a couch.  We found it on sale 55% off! — at Kuebler’s in downtown Salem. It’s a Broyhill, it’s firm and plush and perfect and supportive.

It’s the midnight parenting  these young parents needed — and it was totally worth it.

****By the way, Adam has the baby on his head because this is a proven position to combat the Dreadful Wails.***

Happy Salemversary to me!

One year ago yesterday, my husband and I headed out of Idaho Falls, racing along 84 and down I-5 to make it to Salem at 3:43 p.m. on the afternoon of December 1.

We celebrated in true Salem fashion — we worked late, cooked at home, and watched Jon Stewart before collapsing in our bed.

I’ve been frantically putting together gift baskets based on Salem-area edibles for the past two days while trying to finish up the semester at the University of Oregon, finish some work projects, decorate the house, and not succumb to the nesting instinct that is taking over my mind more every day.

I wrote about these baskets, and the idea of exporting Salem, in my column this month, which lists a few of the area treasures I’ve scoured up over the past months, but it struck me that there aren’t any embedded links on my December column at Salem Monthly, so here’s the good stuff with links to the producers.

• A bag of Gnome Hazelnut Factory hazelnuts – with the hope that they might entice people to come walk with me among our area’s gorgeous hazelnut groves in the new year.
• A 3/4 pound bag of Hairbender coffee from Salem’s Latte, the only place in town that carries Stumptown coffee.
• Oregon White Truffle Oil for the foodies in the family, the only real American truffle oil in existence, hand-infused by Jack Czarnecki of the Joel Palmer House, who actually unearths all of those truffles himself.
• E.Z. Orchards Marionberry syrup, with a gift card carrying my favorite of Chris Rock’s jokes about former D.C. mayor Marion Berry.
• One resin wine stopper (pic above), designed to look like a 19th century Victorian doorbell, by AmericanAntiqueHardware.com, a preservation site run by my neighbor.
• Silver Falls Creamery Goat cheese, a chevre so mind-bogglingly good my husband and I have a song we sing about it.
• A bottle of Eola Hills 2008 pinot noir to tie it all together.
• To clean up afterward, one bar of S.L.A.B. soap with a holiday-friendly Douglas Fir or Frankincense Myrrh scent profile.

That’s just my list. What do you put in your local gift baskets? What is Salem’s most exportable good?

It’s no secret that I’m pushing nine months pregnant. This isn’t a mommy blog, and thus I haven’t made its readers privy to all of the regular annoyances of the gestational cycle.

But it should be clear by now that being pregnant in Salem changes things. I’m no longer the spry, energetic blogger I once was, posting nearly every day, extending my circle far and wide, traveling nearly every weekend.

In fact, these days I’m pretty much a Weeble.

The biggest surprise of pregnancy for me is how small it has made my world. I’m still desperately seeking salem, but my consumer habits have changed remarkably over the past two or three months, and so has my energy level.

So I will make this one post on pregnant Salem with the hopes that you pregnant women, or once pregnant women, or husbands of pregnant women, or friends of pregnant women will find some value in it.

Best pickles: Auntie Becky’s dill pickles, made right here in town, have won the top prize at the Oregon State Fair. You can buy them at Roth’s — and if you were lucky enough to be  there last weekend, you might have even met Auntie Becky herself.

Best hungry pregnant woman dinner: The avocado burger at Rockin’ Rogers on Market Street NE. As an added bonus, you can giggle over the Saturday Evening Post advertisements on the tables.

Best place to geek out on baby stuff: Baby Depot at Burlington Coat Factory. I have never bought anything there, but it’s wonderful eye candy for when the womb takes over.

Best second-hand baby store: Reruns for Kids on S. Commercial.

Best retail baby stores: T.J. Maxx. I bought this Small Paul snuggly sweater the other day — probably my biggest baby splurge so far.

Best maternity wear, retail: Burlington Coat Factory. As my belly (and, erm, the rest of me) has grown, I’ve been buying size 14 Calvin Klein dresses there for far less than most maternity wear costs.

Best maternity wear, second-hand: My husband’s closet. Outside of my home, Value Village. I’ve heard Goodwill has a pretty good selection as well.

Nicest people to pregnant people: E.Z. Orchards’ staff. It must be the abundance of produce and the donuts at the door.

Any I have missed? I still have about four weeks left and haven’t ruled out taking  many more trips outside before settling in for winter.

We arrived in Salem with enough stuff to fill our small house, except for maybe an old couch.  We’ve acquired little things here and there to make this Salem cottage a home, but have been waiting for that extra special living room carpet to seal the deal.

Perhaps because it was the last thing we really needed — and I say need because I don’t want any babies crawling around on hardwoods exclusively — we put off the purchase. We looked around, we saw some really ugly, grandma’s attic carpets, we scoffed and turned away and put it off for another day.

And then we went to Tuesday Morning a few weeks ago and happened upon this strange carpet. I both love and hate the thing. It’s a little Christmas-y for my taste, but I found myself drawn to its hexagonal patterns and color palette, which seemed so much Midwest meets Pacific Northwest.

So we got it. And have been living with it for almost a month.

And that’s when it struck us. We didn’t buy a carpet, we actually bought a Settler’s game board in carpet form.

I’ll trade two wheat for three brick!