Monday, June 3, 2013

Not the finest of vehicles...

As previously noted, the LA and I are expecting a child. One of the many consequences thereof is that the hitherto merely undersized bed we'd been sharing rapidly became far too small, and so we wanted a larger one. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately with respect to the forthcoming sprog and its inevitable deleterious effect on finances, we were both raised with deeply ingrained habits of frugality, and effectively throwing away a nearly-new bed sat ill with those habits.

Enter the LA's parents, who had a somewhat larger bed which they were not using. One size up, from a "Full" to a "Queen", would be a significant improvement, and would also result in a better-sized guest bed for the inlaws. And so it came to pass that I arranged with a couple of friends that I'd rent a U-haul van, they'd help me hump the heavy stuff, and we'd swap them.

I hadn't known when I arranged this that one of said friends is currently sans driver's license, for petty reasons, and so I had to detour to collect him as the first step in this. Once he was in the van with me, we repaired to my home, and got the mattress, box spring, and headboard into the van. Once we were done with that, the second assistant arrived, and we convoyed to the inlaws', since the van only had two seats. Whatever happened to bench seats? It's not as though there wasn't ample space, with the column shifter and foot parking brake; but no, silly captain's chairs it was. Once at the inlaws', we found our first real snag: the frame we'd all blithely assumed could be adjusted for a full... couldn't. Into the van it went, then, and with bed F at the inlaws, disassembled, and bed Q in the van, it was back home.

Reassembling the bed was easy enough, and with that I bid farewell to my assistants and returned the van to whence it came, with great relief. I'd appreciated the very high seating position (with my long torso, I was able to look straight over full-sized SUVs; quite the change from my usual position in a car!) and I'd enjoyed the oomph provided by the big, lazy V8 I was sat over, but everything else had been rather terrible. Once I had my car again, I took myself home and knocked down our adjustable frame; it came apart into three long pieces, two of which required the ski hole in my car's backseat, and then it was time to reassemble bed F. That done, having found out that my MIL had not been using a waterproof mattress cover, I took a trip to Target for a waterproof one (with a baby on the way, it's mildly to moderately essential) and finally came home, to finish dressing the bed and then take a shower.

After all those shenanigans, I was in no fit state to cook, and we headed off to one of our regular Italian eateries; having managed to miss lunch entirely, I was running on fumes and needed good solid peasant cooking. Plenty of pasta. Shortly after we were served, who should sit in the next booth but one of my erstwhile assistants and his wife! So there was an amusing end to a very strenuous and remarkably satisfying day.

Of course, I'll be unable to sensibly comment on the comfort of the "new" bed tonight. After a day like that, I could sleep on a freshly felled oak.