Shopping makes me hyperventilate.
i despise it. Yet sometimes, it is necessary. After putting off purchasing furniture for my dining room and bedroom for about three years*, i was overdue.
Acquiring the services of Irish, one of my gentleman friends, with the perfect attributes, i was ready. Namely? Manly trucks and trailers PLUS a metrosexual propensity to like furniture shopping. “It’s just Ikea”, he said. “How hard can it be?” But i planned my purchases for a month. Measuring this and that, determining whether we’d need to bring his trailer for the bundles of flat-pack boxes or if the big truck would be sufficient.
Hyperventilation started as soon as we entered the store. “Why are these people smiling? Do they ENJOY this?” He calmed me down by getting me an ice cream cone, patting me gently on the head, and shepherding me to the escalator. i really started tweaking by the time we were in the dining room display area…
Letting Irish do most of the design adjustments**, i mostly took notes on item numbers and locations for pick up in the self-service warehouse. Interspersed with moments of hyperventilation, we finally made it to the pick up area. Where naturally, they only had three of the dining chairs out that i wanted to purchase.
Sending him off to get the table, i asked the clerk if there were any more available. Striking out, we met up at the check out, with two full flatbed carts of furniture and a shopping cart full of miscellaneous stuff. “Check to make sure all of the numbers match”, he said, as he pulled two carts into a checkout line.
“Whatever…”
After we unloaded the cartons into my place, he headed out to run errands. To repay him for services rendered, i was planning to fix dinner, and he’d be returning at eight. Which left me about four hours to put together a dining room table and chairs upon which to serve the food.
Starting with the table, i pulled it from the carton – to find it was the wrong item. Round. Not the square i intended to buy.
“Son of a flat-packed bitch!” Yep. Should have checked those numbers as he’d suggested. So i improvised, and we managed dinner at the bar in the kitchen. i’ll have to make a return trip this weekend. As much as i hate shopping, i hate returning even more.
Over the course of the week, i’ve managed to get my bedroom stuff assembled, while cutting and hacking my limbs in a thousand different ways. Wrenched my back, too. But it looks better. And the dresser doesn’t lean to the left.
Almost three years after i moved here? It’s almost done. Well, at least the upstairs… Won’t be tackling the downstairs until i stop hyperventilating.
pic found here. best to enlarge it, unless you’ve got really good eyes.
* Leftover bits and pieces from my old house worked just fine. There’s nothing wrong with using old living room end tables for a night stand or two. And that dresser that we bought from WalMart? It worked fine, once you got used to the fact that it listed about 30 degrees to port…
** The table that i’d chosen for use as the coffee bar in my bedroom? Uuuuuugly. So he found something that worked better, and i simply said “Whatever”.