Couches, Confections and Conundrums

Today I learned a couple of valuable lessons.

Lesson #1 : Women are downright filthy liars.

My beautiful wife informed me a few days ago that her son was getting a new couch and said we could have his old one. Good, right?

Well, she originally told me to wait up for her to get in from work, then we’d load up our old couch, take it to the dump, swing by her son’s house on the way home and pick up the new one. Bob’s your Uncle, Fanny’s your Aunt.

What she hadn’t told me was that she was also getting rid of the futon and the love-seat and that we’d be stopping by Lowes on the way to pick up 6 bales of hay for her son (which apparently you need for growing grass on newly landscaped land).

So we set off, and Sunny’s Mom, who we had borrowed the Loveseat and futon from decided she didn’t want them back. This meant we drove around to three different Goodwill stores trying to give them away.

They didn’t want them. Apparently, they can’t take the futon because it’s been used as a bed, and because the loveseat’s fabric had been picked a little, they didn’t want that either.

No love for the love seat. How ironic.

Oh, I totally forgot to mention. Our couch? Because of Sunny’s furniture rearranging, we couldn’t maneuver it out of the front door, and it was too big to fit through our back door. That’s why I went through 6 cutting disks on my Dremel, slicing through the frame to get it into three separate pieces we could fit through the door.

Nothing like sparks flying everywhere and the melodious sound of heavy-duty steel screaming to set you up for the day.

Anyhoo…

So we get to the dump to offload the loveseat and couch (Sunny’s other son took the futon off our hands).

You know taxi-driver tourettes? Where you always have to ask the cab driver if he’s been busy and ask him what time he’s working until? I have the same problem at the dump. You see, our dump is manned by convicts. Nothing major, you don’t have a murderer helping you offload your trash…it’s usually guys who’ve found themselves in the stockade for non-payment of child support or bad checks.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t help but say “Hey, how’s it going?” to the guy in the orange jump-suit helping me toss my trash in the compactor. They always say “Fine.” Or “Not bad.”…but they always look at me with eyes that say:

“Look, I’m locked up, and I spend my days either in the freezing cold or baking heat, handling other people’s garbage. How do you think I’m doing? I’m just peachy, thanks. I’d in no way rather be at home with my feet up watching TV. Has that bag with the rancid ground beef and the coffee-ground covered banana peels split open? Joy of joys!!”

The saddest thing is I know that the very next time we take the trash off I’ll ask the guy the same thing.

The next notable thing that happened was buying the hay at Lowes. You see, you pay, drive your truck over to the big semi trailers, and then a sales assistant will open it up and load it for you.

So Sunny and I are sitting on the tailgate of the truck, when a guy with a Lowes shirt walks up.

Let me describe this guy:

He was at least 70, and had that ‘fun grandpa’ look about him. He also apparently couldn’t bend his left knee, and it took him over 5 minutes to cover the 50 yards to the truck. When he arrived, he was a little out of breath, but hey, at 70 a walk like that will do that to you, especially with a bad knee.

So I’m expecting him to tell us he’s sorry about the wait and someone will be out shortly, or to tell us there was a mistake ringing up our order.

Instead, I watch in horror as he takes our receipt, opens up a trailer and struggles with a step ladder. Slowly (oh so painfully slowly) he climbs the five steps to the top, in a very shaky ‘left foot up, move right foot to same step, rest. Left foot up…’ pattern. Then I watched as he tried to maneuver himself off the stepladder, around the closed trailer door, and into the open one.

The only thing I could think is: ‘Shit, if that guy falls, which there’s about a 70% chance of that happening, this dude’s dead…or he’s at least gonna be in need of two new hips. His bones must be like raw spaghetti!’

Honestly, I’d have told him to sit his ass down and I’d have got the bales myself, but it was one of those situations that you watch, unable to move, simply because your brain can’t process the fact it’s actually happening.

In a store packed to the gills with 16 – 30 year old staff, they send the dude with the bum knee (that could probably be a war wound from World War One) to climb a rickety step ladder and offload 6 huge bales of hay.

We left before the guy got out of the trailer, and I honestly feel a little guilty for not staying to make sure he got down okay.

Lowes, I’m all for employing the elderly, but they should be sitting at the front door greeting people or behind the check-out counters. It’s probably not a good idea to have the 70 year old with a bad leg climbing stepladders and manhandling bales of hay that way about 50lbs each.

So after all this running around, we get home and spend half an hour trying to get the couch, new foot-rest and armchair into the house. (Oh, that’s the other thing…Sunny said “couch” not “entire fucking living room set that is not only incredibly heavy, but also awkward as hell to move, with no points to actually hold the damn thing when you’re balancing with one foot on the back of the truck and the other in the doorway, praying to God you don’t slip and break your fucking neck, shortly before a 100lb couch lands on your balls.”)

I also forgot to mention that I got absolutely no sleep the night before and weas doing all this after being awake for over 25 hours.

So, you’re probably asking yourself why my ass isn’t in bed getting some sleep, and is instead sitting in front of the computer, relaying this tale of misadventure and calamity.

Well, the truth is, we got into bed, and for some reason started talking about candy. So I started talking about all the things I can’t get in the USA that I loved in the UK. Then, for the life of me, I couldn’t remember the name of one of my favorites and it drove me so crazy trying to remember, that I decided to come back into the living room and look it up on the interweb.

For those who are interested, the item in question is “Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles”

In your face bad memory! The internet spanks you like a disobedient non-synapse firing whore!