The Persian Rug

My uncle is Persian. 

His house is adorned with beautiful Persian rugs.

If he asks us over we usually eat fabulous Persian cuisine. 

My uncle is very generous as is my aunt, and last year in a moment of extreme kindness and desperation to make room for yet another lovely rug, they decided to relinquish one into the clamoring hands of the extended family masses. 

Biggest mistake of their lives.  

From that point on the rug has worked a strange magic on our family, one member at a time. 

It starts as a burning desire, "I must have the rug". You nurse this feeling for a week or two, or months as  you wait to see if you're next in the line up of lucky folks to get the rug.

 It's like the lottery.

 And it's serious. 

Be that as it may, for some reason unbeknownst to me the dang thing never stays in one place for very long...  

Then comes your glorious day. Oh, day of all days. You have the rug in your possession, it is your own.  

Your precious. 

Bask in the short-lived glory. 

It is at this point that the rug's magic turns sour.

You start to wonder..."what if this is actually from Ikea, this tag could be forged" or "What if an Aztec pattern would have looked better with my decor..." 

You  also start thinking things along the lines of "holy-toledo-batman, this thing is roughly the size of a small aircraft carrier". And then, once again - the rug loses its shine, it is rejected and sent on to the next house of heartbreak. The next lottery winner. The next person to fall under the spell of the Persian rug. 

It's a sad tale, folks. It's an orphan rug in a foreign land. It has been stored in three garages in the last year. It has been accepted as a gift and subsequently rejected.  

This is a mystery to all since the rug is for one thing, beautiful - for another thing, huge and thirdly, free. 

That's a triple threat. 

I won the lottery today... the rug is mine for the time being. It's sitting nice and snug in my living room and I actually think I might have made it through the process without becoming disenchanted.

 It's hard to wrap my head around using the word "snug" about something the size of a small swimming pool.

Anyway, I'm off to burn a Christmas tree and sit on my rug. 

xo,  Rae