Originally published at Thus Sayeth the Lord…. You can comment here or there.
Technically, I’m not a Liar– I’m a writer.
And technically the niche was more of a…corner. A corner in one of the rooms in our house, to be precise.
And technically, the wardrobe was actually more of an armoire, although I’m still fuzzy on what the difference between those two items actually, technically, is…
Anyway, what’s important is what the wardrobe was to become. It wasn’t what it pretended to be either. Or rather, it WAS what it was, but was soon to be something else.
Entirely…against…its…will.
We’ve been looking for a cabinet, or cabinet-type-object, to house all the myriad entertainment devices we use to culturally enrich our kids. M has been spearheading this project– I personally don’t see much wrong with stacking up the VCR, DVD player, Television, Gamecube, XBOX, and device switch all on top of each other. I think the sight of our youngest swinging on all the electric cords, monkey-like, might have added some impetus to M’s search. So we went tv cabinet shopping.
For. Six. Months.
Okay, it was actually more along the lines of two weeks, but do you have any idea how much TV cabinets cost? Like in the couple-hundreds-of-dollars? And those are the CHEAP ones? And (ladies pay attention) furniture stores (YES INCLUDING IKEA) sap testosterone in ways Lifetime made-for-TV movies can only dream of? I swear! Want to cut population growth? Want to know how the Swedes obtain zero population? IKEA IS THE ANSWER! Two hours in there, you come out like Sven Torgelsuun, wearing all-wool knit cardigans and talking about whether the blinds should be roman or venetian, and wasn’t that demo kitchen FABULOUS, and pining for ligonberries.
I’m ashamed that I even know the difference between a roman shade and venetian blind.
It was in Ikea that we came upon our entertainment-center-cabinet-to-be. We’d gone through the whole frickin’ store, and it wasn’t until the warehouse portion of it that we came across something that would work (or some approximation of “work”). Sure, it said ‘wardrobe’ instead of TV cabinet; sure it was designed to hold garments rather than gaming systems; sure it only had ONE shelf; we were (actually M was) undaunted. We picked up the wardrobe for half the price of a TV cabinet and brought it home. It sat in our garage for a week, while I hoped that M would come around to my line of thinking. Mainly, my line of thinking is– “Gaming systems AND a jungle gym! Awesome! Win-win!”
It was not to be. We began assembling the silly thing on Friday evening. And assembling. Assembled some more. Do you know just how USELESS Ikea’s instruction manuals are? They’re not quite as bad as, say, Joan Rivers, but that’s just because they don’t make snide remarks about what you’re wearing. Ikea’s instructions, for those pleasantly ignorant, have no text. They’re all pictures, which would be fine, if the pictures had been drawn by competant, normal-thinking people. Instead, you get vague squares, general-area arrows, and bubbles of ‘try to make it look like this’ intent. Not exactly detailed. Still, we managed to get it put together. By that time, it was almost midnight, so we left the assembled wardrobe there to think on its recalcitrance, and perhaps consider being more willing tomorrow, or we would put it together some more!
Saturday morning began with me cutting some extra shelves from some spare wood we have lying around. See how manly I am? I’ve got frikkin’ slabs of wood lying around! I have no idea where th
is wood comes from. Trees, I think.
I got busy measuring, marking, cutting– and my saw ran out of power. (I use a battery-powered saw for…um…portability. That’s it.) My spare battery was also out of juice. Looks like the kids’d have access to the Fun-Time Jungle gym for another day or so yet…
In the meantime, M wanted to test the wardrobe’s included shelf. We installed the shelf, and I lifted up the television on top of it, and the whole assembly fell down. Actually, just the shelf. But it fell on my foot, and it FELT like the whole wardrobe had collapsed on me.
The pegs that had been designed to support the shelf had been ripped out by the weight of the television. Further, the holes that those pegs had been screwed into were mangled in a downward-ripping direction. M and I stared at the mess, and felt the burden of low-cost furniture necessity tear into our very souls…
And then, she began to plot. I say plot and that’s what I mean. M doesn’t plan. She schemes. She…machinates. It’s chilling and frightening, and every time she does this, I’m reminded why she is the Perfect Wife For Me. I’m silly in love with her. :le sigh:
She went to Lowes and returned with screws, an L-shaped bracket, more wood, and hinges. The hinges were necessary because the wardrobe doors didn’t open wide enough for viewing the TV from anywhere in the room but directly in front of it. We unassembled the doors, reassembled them with the new hinges, hacked a couple shelves out of the bought-from-Lowes-wood, and PUT THE WHOLE FRIKKIN FRIKKER TOGETHER!
And then we connected all the electricity. After all this, you’d expect that there’d be an explosion, or a fire at least. Nope. Everything worked perfectly, first time. It was now 10pm, and we could start…on preparing our house for the Easter Morning jubilee… 
NOW, there’s a lesson in all this. Putting that cabinet together is like being married. Really. So, what I didn’t say above is that I was getting frustrated with this whole process. The sawing, the wandering around Ikea, the shelf-on-my-foot, the door hinges… frustration, frustration, frustration. I’m not pleasant when I’m frustrated. I’m EVIL. I wanted to give in, give up– but M had a plan, and she didn’t give up. And when things began working out, it was SOOOOO nice, because of all the drama we’d wandered through. When I saw her plan, how she’d worked things out, and how good it would be, my frustration melted away.
The entertainment cabinet looks pretty good. Because she stuck it out, and got me to stick it out, too. And because we stuck it out, that room looks a lot better now.
Oooh…allegory.