May I toot my own horn?
No, I don’t have a horn. Well I do, but I can’t toot it. It’s one of the many things I can’t do well. We have a couple bugles here and when I try to toot them it’s all spittle and flatulence. There’s no music in it.
Dave can toot the horns. He used to toot them every time I came home from work and pressed the honky-horn on my bicycle, and he’d come out on the back porch and toot one of our bugles. The neighbors politely ignored this exchange but I’ll bet the ones that didn’t get full-ass Reveille when they came home were jealous. Dave can play just about any instrument, none of them expertly, but he does have a natural facility. He’s got good embouchure, too, but that’s private.
My tootable horn is 100% metaphorical. Listen up. I just got a shipment of three side tables to go with our Adirondack chairs on the patio. They came with Some Assembly Required. There were three steps, six bolts, and an Allen wrench, and yet I did it. I felt, as the kids say, empowered.
I hauled the little boxes inside and bolted the pieces solid while sitting on my recliner. Because that was the level of bad-assedness I was bringing to the table. Tables. Yes. I used the bubble wrap to cushion the table tops on the floor and started Allen-wrenching the bolts in per instruction. It was going splendidly.
I am aware that this level of pride should really not apply to an assembly project with three easy steps and all the necessary tools in the box. It should be approached with the same aplomb with which you take milk from the fridge and pour it on your corn flakes. But I was elated. I totally did this thing, and I’m not normal.
I’m just not. It was no given that I was going to get three little tables out of this. It’s like trying to get a sparrow to crochet a pot holder. Oh, sure—most of them can do it—they can knit a whole nest with their face. But there’s always that one bird that’s a little off. I’m that bird.
Here I should explain that there are entire areas of my brain—seriously, you can hear an echo in there—in which things that are easy for other people are completely missing for me. For instance, the ability to manipulate three-dimensional objects in space. The reason I have not qualified for Astronaut is not (just) that I’m too short.
Dave once ran outside when I was working on a project all concerned that I might have had a stroke of some kind because he saw that most of my body was above the project but my head was oddly bent underneath it, and what I was doing was trying to figure this out: if I was installing a screw righty-tighty on top, was it was still righty-tighty from underneath, or does basic physics not apply in furniture-assembly? To those wondering, yes, it’s still righty-tighty from the bottom. Do Not ask me to figure this out using just my mind. I can’t do it.
Anyway the third end table didn’t go together. The last two bolt-holes did not line up. And yet I did not panic, or run to Dave or one of the other lesbians. I fixed it myself. Tomorrow I’m going to space.
Just one of the reasons I prefer to buy small pieces of furniture at garage sales or consignment shops: it’s already put together, I just have to load it in Paul’s truck. Too many of these stores have no other option than for you to put it together yourself. And, as you say, some of the parts to not line up. I’ve put together many pieces of furniture, all the while sweating and cursing. No more.
The other way is to not get new stuff at all, which works for me most of the time.
Flat-box furniture is, for me, a delightful jigsaw puzzle, but then, I also do well with maps, and I enjoy untangling yarn snarls. (Except with mohair. If you have tangled your mohair, you may as well just give it to the cat to play with. Mohair tangles are more intertwined than balkan politics.)
I tangled my mohair in a zipper once.
Love every bit of this. Plus how great you look.
Thanks! And please note Successful Meadow behind me. Used to be weeds; then plastic; then cardboard and compost; and it all worked, by gum!
You have every right to be proud, you look good Murr and your outdoor setup is so nice, I love your style! Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go look up embouchure..🤔
Please do!
Not to put a spanner in the works, but why am I having trouble with the second sentence in the last paragraph? (Could easily be because there’s a pre-existing spanner in my own works.)
And I am entirely proud adjacent to you!
Why, I do not know. Bolt-holes? Oh…
Third. Third sentence in last paragraph. See? My own works are jammed up.
Ah! Well. Dave is in many ways not a normal man. The best ways, actually.
Ah, that pesky Oxford comma!
I just wondered which of Murr and Dave was a lesbian and decided it was probably Dave.
Among other things I’ve worked professionally as a furniture assembler. There’s usually some hiccup that needs special attention (and swear words) to overcome.
Which brings to mind that the former senior boss of the now defunct machine shop that employed me before the professional furniture assembler gig had a rich and varied portfolio of swear words.
He came in one morning and proceeded to tear me a new one at high volume and with many colorful allusions and metaphors. In the midst of his tirade he stopped as if someone had lifted the needle from the record and said to me in a normal voice, “You didn’t do anything wrong. I just needed to scream at someone.” He went into the office and that round was over.
When I am royally pissed about something, I can let out a stream of curse words that make absolutely no grammatical or even anatomical sense. It does seem to make me feel better, though to yell and curse at an object that ticked me off, even though I doubt that it can hear me and take offense.
Your vocabulary word for today is “lalochezia”. It means “the use of vulgar or foul language to relieve stress or pain”. If a certification of mastery was offered for this, I would have it hanging proudly on my wall.
Throwing a roll of duct tape violently and repeatedly at a wall while emitting a loud stream of curse words enhances the experience and relieves even more stress. So I hear.
I don’t do it well if I’m really mad. It’s likely to come out as “You Poopyhead” or something. My friend Linder had a really good string though. It was “You m-f, c-s, c-l, b-b bastard.” Did the job.
Time to come by for a sit, quaff and chat!
Take a chance! (But not tomorrow.)
What a pretty space!
Thanks!
You do look great as others before me have said. I love your outdoor seating area it looks perfect with the little tables. I prefer now to buy already assembled furniture, putting pieces together gets hard when you have arthritis in both thumbs.
I can totally understand. Unless a task is really ‘straight forward’ I have not a clue and totally overthink which is not helpful. I just don’t ‘see’ things the way others do. Congrats on your putting together adventure~
I wish that were not also true of my quilting!
Your outdoor seating area looks truly inviting!
You are invited.
I had the same problem with the third sentence in the last paragraph. Since you used the word “other”, I was trying to decide if Dave is, indeed, a lesbian, or if you’d referred to a different lesbian earlier in your tale. It felt similar to your reaction mentioned in the blog about the use of “them/they” 😉
He’s referred to himself that way, but it probably was overly confusing!
Great job, and what a fun, colorful set of furniture!
I once spent countless hours, tears, and curses putting together an electric corner fireplace for our bedroom, only to discover when putting on the last piece–which was the wooden top–that it was cracked. I wasn’t about to take the goddamned thing apart and haul it back to the store at that point, so I just covered it with knickknacks, and we lived with it. The fact that I don’t dust also helped hide the damage.
Given enough time, undisturbed dust develops spackling capability.
I count on that.