I have officially become a codger: I took delivery of my recliner today. It’s even called a “Lounge-O-Matic.” If that’s not codgerish, I don’t know what is. It immediately cast its spell over me; I wrote this drivel while reclined in its lounge-o-riffic embrace.

When we first began shopping for what we call “grown-up furniture” (because it’s the kind of stuff we want to buy now that we’re reasonably sure the kids won’t puke on it) I wanted to get a Mission recliner with an Ottoman, and we found a really nice one, but even the United States Congress would have balked at the jump it would have added to the national debt. I got my little beauty at Don’s Furniture Warehouse. It’s sort of a Mission style if you don’t count the clockwork mechanism under the seat and the flip-up leg rest. I don’t. I love it.

They also delivered our sofa at the same time the recliner came, by the way. It’s also “grown-up” furniture, a full-size, Mission-style sofa with Coleman-green cushions and framed in straight-sawn red oak. Beautiful stuff. The salesman said everybody goes for the quarter-sawn white oak because it’s a sign of quality, meaning that everybody has more money than I do. Even the red oak cost half again as much when it was quarter-sawn. “Quarter-sawn” means that they cut it with one of those big old band saws with a lumberjack at either end, and every time one of them pulls the saw through the log they add a quarter to the finished price. It adds up pretty fast, which is why we went for the straight-sawn red oak.

But by god Mission furniture is beautiful. The sofa’s got a big wooden squared-off frame with slats all around, darkly stained and smelling powerfully of linseed oil. The recliner’s a bit more curvy but has almost as many slats and the stain matches the sofa’s. We bought an end table, too, just because they gave us such a deal on the two pieces. We made a salesman very happy that day.