This is really quite mean of me, but I can't help it. Like many of you, I was home for the holidays last week. Here's what I saw: my future. And it scared the hell out of me. They say that you if want to see what a young woman is going to look like when she gets older, just take a look at her mother. My mother's a babe at 75. But if you want to see what my living room is going to look like if I don't hurry up and get rid of those nasty couches, take a look at my mother's. It ain't pretty.

Here we have my sister sitting on the leather couch my father scored from the next door neighbors thirty years ago after the previous owner almost died on it. The story goes something like: man nearly overdoses, my father the doctor saves him, couch becomes bad reminder of embarrassing incident and makes its way, cheap, to us. You can't really tell from the photo, but trust me when I say it is so beat up that my older relatives can't sit in for fear of not being able to get up. It's more like a man-eating catcher's mitt than a sofa. The tawny velvet cushions you see are from an even older couch--they still smell like our long gone dog Duke--and they're there to provide, um, support.

I could go on--note the cowhide quilt-rug in the upper-right hand corner--but I won't. My mom knows she's got to get a new couch. So do I. And we will. Because now I've shamed us both into it.