It's really something more like 15 years and 9 1/2 months.

Only 16 years or so, and counting down, until I can buy new furniture.

I long ago decided that I would not buy new furniture while there were kids living in the house. All furniture would be used, second-hand, or, if I had to buy new, would be on the order of Frankencouch. I decided that after The Boy one day carved his name into the old coffee table we had.

Then I broke that rule a few years back when I celebrated a Christmas bonus by purchasing a new couch and coffee table, only to have the Babies! born a year later, so now I have to watch as Mr F pulls the drawers out of the coffee table and stands in them. $400 on a coffee table and it's used as some sort of pretend-diving-board.

If I were going to buy new furniture before the Babies! turn 18 and go off to college, I wouldn't do it by mucking around in drafty, giant stores where I get hassled by salesmen and then have to wait 33 weeks for them to ship the furniture I'd just bought. No, I'd go someplace like this "Buy Entertainment Centers Online" site I found, I site I like to go look at just to dream of the day I can purchase a new entertainment center or one of the great TV Consoles and have it put in my house without fear that it will be scratched by having a barn thrown at it, or stained with milk and S'mores.

So I spend my days looking at this:And dreaming of having that in my house -- it's beautiful! It could hold all of the movies we don't get time to watch, all of the books I had to put in the closet because the Babies! were throwing them at each other, all my old knick-knacks -- the signed softball from my old team that went 1-9, the coffee can from Morocco, the metal shovel that Oldest made in some class or other -- and still have room left over for other stuff.

That, or a new TV Stand sure would beat the one we've got now, a bland, glass-and-metal thing that has fingerprints permanently impressed on it.

To make things better for people who CAN shop for furniture now, and worse for me, Buy Entertainment Centers Online offers free shipping on all their furniture, unlike any other store I've ever bought furniture at. And everything they sell is discounted. That entertainment center I'm dreaming of is marked down 40% -- saving over $2,000 right now.

They don't just sell plain old entertainment centers at Buy Entertainment Centers Online, either. They've got Armoire style, as well. But I can only look so much before the longing gets too great...

So I'll bookmark the page, and hope they're still in business in 16 years... and counting.