Take a Seat

BigDaddyFish and I got married young, and when you set up house when you are young you tend to be poor, so everything in your house is hand-me-down or cheap crap.  Slowly over the years we've been replacing some of our furniture as it wears out or we just get totally sick of it.  We have a few nice pieces, among them the dining room set given to us by my in-laws when we moved to this house, consisting of a killer hutch, table that can seat 8 comfortably, and the chairs that survived: one arm chair and three side chairs.

Well, the side chairs have decided that they aren't up to our large asses anymore, and the cheap windsor chairs from Target that we have been using for five years also decided to crap out beyond multiple repairs, last weekend.  Last Sunday we were down to three chairs - one windsor, one side chair that has Sunny's booster on it and Must. Not. Be. Disturbed, and the arm chair that we like to leave in our living room to make it easier for my MIL, who has Parkinsons, to get up.  That meant that for a family of 6 we had one functional chair at our dinner table.

Usually, this isn't a problem, because I have a Problem with Clutter, and the table tends to be buried a foot deep with random papers, bills, books, photos, toys, and other crap that I'm too lazy busy to deal with, but I've cleaned up my act a bit and we had been eating at the table of late.  By Wednesday I was sick of the lack of chairs, and late Wednesday night we ordered some chairs from Target.com.  Since we really didn't know what we wanted, we chose three different pairs of chairs to try them out.  We don't care if the furniture matches or not if it is functional and comfortable, and we don't want anything too nice until the children are old enough to keep from sticking Hello Kitty and Batman stickers all over it.  Plus, Target was offering 15% off all furniture purchases over $125, plus I had a 10% off coupon from them since I have a Target card. 

I checked my email this morning and noted that one of our pairs of chairs had shipped yesterday.  I was talking to BDF on the phone as I checked my email, and he said something to the effect of now we'll get our chairs early next week.  I said "Yeah, maybe, but maybe a miracle will happen and they'll show up today."  BDF scoffed at the possibility.

Not five minutes later, Sunny starts yelling "We got a package!  A big one!" and I thought for sure she was wrong because the doorbell didn't ring, but I went to the door to check and sure enough, there was a humongous box on our front steps.  Two chairs.  I was pissed that the UPS guy didn't ring the blasted doorbell, because of course he was gone by the time I got to the door, and I could have had him put the box in the house, but somehow Sunny and I wrangled the blasted thing in here.

Here's the math:

• 22 each of 2 different kind of washers
• 8 nuts
• 14 screws
• one mom
• three kids (Nemo didn't really help much)
• one pair of scissors
• two odd wrenches
• one screwdriver
• 1.5 hours

Equals two of these.  The better math is: shipping for 6 chairs, $124.  Discounts applied to order, $117.  Yup, we effectively get 6 chairs brought to our house for $7.  I can deal with that.

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And because this wouldn't be a mommyblog without poop stories:

I was multitasking, talking to a friend on the phone trying to schedule a playdate while I was feeding Nemo his oatmeal and pears.  The bigs were out in the family room watching the TV -- some Nickelodeon show was blaring and I had the phone mashed into my ear so I could hear and the kids were shouting and I was trying desperately to ignore them when the words "Potty, carry, show, poopy, spill" managed to worm their way through the cacophony into my brain.

Sunny had used her little potty to do her business and tried to carry it into the kitchen to show me the results.  Somehow along the way she had tripped or something and spilled the contents onto the carpet in the middle of the family room.  She had been quite productive, if you know what I mean.

My jaw hung open, I hung up the phone with my friend, and tried to figure out how to deal with the mess.  We are getting rid of this carpet as soon as I can handle the nightmare of moving all our stuff off this level of the house (the most inhabited, of course) or when we move, whichever comes first, so I wasn't really worried about staining, but man, oh, man, what a fetid odor.  Now it just smells like Resolve, with just a hint of eau de crap underneath. 

Up next week: posts about The Manny, how Little Man likes to scare the crap out of me on a regular basis, a feel-good story about a small neighborhood pharmacy, and the complicated dysfunctional mess that is dealing with my family to care for my grandfather.  Remind me if I forget.

Comments

[Redneck Mommy]

My hubs and I got married very young too. It's taken over ten years, but we have finally cobbled together some decent furniture. Except for our bedroom set. My room still looks like a dorm room with a bunch of college students residing in it. Sigh.

And the poop in the carpet. EXACT same thing happened to me with my darling children. Ew.

We now have hardwood floors. I couldn't live knowing what was in my rug.

[Uncle Orca]

God I hate the UPS "ring and run". Assuming they ring at all, of which I'm not necessarily convinced.

As for poop: I think it's time to hide the little potty until it's Nemo's turn...