Sunday 1 June 2008

Lena is a Construction Worker

Arthur and I went to Ikea for the first time yesterday. We sat in the ikea 70s chairs, raced shopping carts down the self-service aisles, and each bought bookshelves.

The bookshelves were heavy. At Arthur’s house, she decided it would be best to slide the package down the stairs instead of carrying it, so she put down her end. As she failed to keep me apprised of her thought process, the whole weight landed on me and nearly knocked me down the stairs. For the record, she claims this is not true.

With the next package, we were more unified. We both agreed to slide it down both flights of stairs. As we let it go, we both watched it slide down…towards her parents’ valuable, spindly-legged table, laden with decorative photographs and objets d’art. We both raced after it, but fortunately it stopped of its own accord a few inches from the piece. We turned to each other and agreed that we needed to think ahead a little more.

Amazingly, we got all the shelves unloaded without major physical or material injury, and assembled without too much disassembly and re-assembly necessary (though I banned Arthur from hammering after three misplaced holes in the back of one set. In her defence, it was late by this time and the light was bad).

Now for the furniture re-arrangement.

2 comments:

Marie said...

I don't envy the heavy lifting, but I do envy the assembling. I take odd pleasure in deciphering bad Japlish instructions (or, in this case, cryptic no-language Swedish drawings with lots of arrows and dotted lines).

I hope your books like their new home.

BagLady said...

I don't have the patience to put that crap together. I am, however, a great and bossy observer.