EARS, BAGS, and a BUREAU...

Well, the deed is done. I drove the next van-load of stuff down to the Weird Little House, unloaded it all myself, and wondered where the hunky guy was who was going to help me with the bureau. Actually, I saw him; he was splurging on some complicated meal at Burger King that involved both fries and onion rings, as well as some burger combo that featured lettuce and tomato, which mine did not. I never did see his face, but he had the S-curve ears that are my undoing, and really thick black hair shot through with gray and a goatee. I had planned to look back when I got up to take my tray to the trashcan, but by the time I had tipped the contents of my tray into the can, I was on auto-pilot and just went out to the car and drove on to the WLHouse. And only after I started the car did I realize that I had meant to look back, just once, briefly, even if I wasn’t going to ask him to move the bureau for me… Just to take a look... sigh.

But I did manage to unload the car. Most of it was easy, just paper bags full of stuff, um, mostly kitchen stuff, mountains of it. The long counter in the kitchen is packed solid with the bags. Luckily, the kitchen is big if not spacious, and there are plenty of cabinets and drawers. Even the not-very-attractive ironware my bean-curd buddies gave me will find a place somewhere... though perhaps not in plain sight.

I slid the filing cabinet drawers out of the cabinet and trudged upstairs with them. I dragged the rug out, maneuvered my grandfather’s chair out the side door of the van, removed the framed art that I had mashed into the embrace of its arms, and got all of it inside. Then I removed the drawers from the bureau. That was easy. Then I managed to slide the bureau out of the back hatch of the van, rotate it on its legs so that it stood partly on the porch, and then waltzed it up onto the porch and through the door. It weighed a lot, and I began to think about how easy it would have been, really, to just have approached a complete stranger and asked him to help me out, an insight which had eluded me at the time...

Well, I had managed to wrestle the bureau into the house without breaking its legs off, which was a plus. I closed the car back up and tried to think of who I could lean on to help me with the damn bureau. It wasn’t really that heavy, just impossible to lift as one guy… Then I had a brilliant idea. I wouldn’t carry it up the stairs, I would slide it up the stairs. Yes, it could slide down and crush me to death, but how likely was that? So I laid out the carpet padding and my bedspread on the stairs, walked and glided the bureau to the bottom of the stairs, and rotated its top onto the highest stair I could reach – it had to go up feet first to have a smooth transition from step to step…

I just shoved, and it magically went on up the stairs. There was a nasty moment after I rested it half-way up, where I had to take the weight again after removing the bedspread from the bottom stairs and moving myself up a couple of steps --- the weight suddenly seemed like more than I could manage --- but at that point, what choice did I have? Rocking it slightly from right to left and back to clear the feet of each stair in turn, I just kept pushing until I got enough of it on the landing that its own weight held it there. I haven’t been as exhilarated by doing anything so stupid in a really long time; but even I have to admit that it was a really stupid thing to do – and God knows having managed it was exhilarating. I practically crowed for joy; after all, I was not lying under the bureau [“solid mahogany,” as it helpfully stated in the factory stamp on the back] at the bottom of the stairs, with my internal organs spread around me and the nasty beige carpeting turning a much brighter color…

I then called a local friend to see if I could mooch dinner off her; no dice. So I hit K-mart and a local furniture outlet that was having a sale. K-mart had tons of stuff I needed, from garbage cans to a laundry basket, but the outlet specialized in seriously ugly furniture that still cost too much, even at prices “up to 70% off.” I noticed that most of the discounts were on the “up to” slope, very little of it was 70% off, and the furniture was, well... ugly.

So I decided to drive my K-mart purchases home and call it a day. Then, right before I reached the WLHouse, I saw an antique store open. I decided I would pull in. I decided I would just have a look. I decided that a table on sale here was much more interesting than the horrible things I would have had to special order from the outlet, and I could take it home right then. And the owner helped me load it into the van. And agreed to drive the mile to the WLHouse and help me carry it in. So I did wind up asking a nice-looking guy for help, but he was [a] a seriously straight, lawn-mowing business type, even if the business was antiques, and [b] too late to help me with the bureau. Sometimes things don’t work out… quite the way your friends planned.

Well, what can I say? I thank everyone for the good advice, but none of you were there, so I just did… what I had to do. Now, if I had just managed to get a glimpse of the face that went with those ears, it would have been a perfect day.