Flames on the Side of My Face

There are some fundamental truths I know about Michael and I. And I go through life understanding those truths and manipulating life circumstances to deal with these unmovable facts.

One of these truths is that Michael does not do furniture assembly.

He can if he has to. But what typically results is (1) a slew of profanity so loud and vile it would embarrass L'il Wayne, (2) a few extra pieces, bits and bobs are leftover after assembly is complete and (3) an epic battle launches between the two of us on whether or not directions are necessary and why I am incapable of reading his mind as to what he needs me to do in order to be helpful.

The upside is, I am one of those rare freaks of nature who loves to assemble furniture. Operating manuals and assembly instructions are written in a special Jen language that I natively understand and love. And so, furniture assembly falls under my purview.

A lifetime ago my mother was in town and wanted to buy baby furniture for The Bean. So she did. And because for some inexplicable reason it takes 8-10 weeks for the evil baby industry to get baby furniture from one location to my house, the furniture arrived today.

Leveraging the frequently under-utilized tool of forethought, I added furniture assembly and trash hauling to the already ridiculous costs of baby furniture because I would be 8 months pregnant by the time it got here and there's no way in hell we'd let Michael assemble something so critical as a crib.

Bliss ensued and what could possibly go wrong...

Oh, interwebs. One day I'll learn.

Maybe.

Having completely forgotten about the baby furniture, I was pleasantly surprised when the delivery company called me earlier this week to tell me the magical baby furniture-making elves (who are the slowest workers ever, by and by) were done with The Bean's furniture. Would I be ready between 10-12 on Wednesday to have them drop the furniture off?

Would I!?!?! But of course!! And everything was chocolate cupcakes topped with sparkly, rainbow sprinkles and fairy dust.

Until today.

At 10 AM I began the obsessive-compulsive look out the window every 5 minutes routine; sometimes quickening my pace if I heard something that remotely sounded like a large truck full of furniture.

This lasted until 3 PM when I finally gave up hope.

At this point you might be asking why I didn't call the furniture store to see where The Bean's furniture was. Well, you see...I had put the receipt for the furniture in the closet in The Bean's room. But that closet was blocked by a ton of things that need to get under the house for storage. This piece of information is going to be very relevant later, so keep it in mind.

At 5 PM, my phone rang. Hark! A gruff voice told me the furniture would be there in 20 minutes and abruptly hung up.

That was when it first crept across my mind that this was not going to be a sparkly shoes and chenille robes type of delivery. But I kept up hope.

Shortly thereafter two Brooklyn transplants showed up at my front door (which I enjoyed having grown up on Long Island), but they had clearly not been having a good day.

Head Brooklynite: Where are we dropping off these boxes?

Jen: (Chipper as can be because The Bean doesn't have to sleep in a dog crate) Follow me!

...

...

By dropping off you mean where we're setting it up, right? We had set-up and trash clean-up as part of the price.

Brooklynite: Nope. It's not on my list. In fact, I talked to the dispatcher before we got here and he specifically said this was not an assembly job.

Ugh. Of course.

Now, because I'm sneaky, I look at the guy's Clipboard of Important Things while he's getting the furniture. Hey! He left it on my table so it's free game. And wouldn't you know, right there on MY ORDER are the words "Set-up and Trash Clean-up."

I can see how those words are confusing.

I'm also completely illogical and decide that I can't point out the clear instructions right on his clipboard so I start hauling junk away from the closet so I can get my trusty receipt. Because me moving tons of junk for a copy of his piece of paper is way more convincing.

By the time all the boxes are in the house, I have my receipt in hand and point out politely how we paid to have them assemble the furniture for us. And let me point out here, by furniture I mean the crib only as the other pieces came assembled. So we are talking about ONE ITEM requiring assembly.

Evil Brooklynite from Hell: Yeah, I believe you lady. (Turns out you don't have to believe me asshole, here's the proof...) We'll do it. (Long pause) I'm terrible at assembling cribs.

Isn't that great!?!?!?

In order to really hammer home his point, he spent the next 20 minutes with his buddy assembling the crib and loudly saying things like "I hate assembling cribs," "See how cheap they make this shit?" and "Where are the directions? I don't know how to assemble cribs. I didn't have kids for a reason."

I'm inviting them to Christmas dinner this year.

Because I'm insane and am driven by a compulsive need to make everyone feel like we are kindred spirits I pop into the nursery and say "I'm so sorry to make the end of your day painful guys. Can I get you anything?"

Man I Try to Kill with My Mental Eye Lasers: Yeah, well, it ain't the end of the day, is it? That's the problem.

O...K...

I may or may not be losing my mind at this point. But I manage to keep my head attached to my body and not let it explode in a nuclear meltdown because my insanity dictates that it's important to make people like you...even the dillweeds of the world.

I leave them to their hushed (think fighter jets taking off) complaining about assembling cribs.

5 minutes later my arch nemesis emerges and asks me for screws because the screws that came with the set are the wrong size. That's reassuring.

This is shortly followed by some more cursing which I reluctantly go investigate.

Stupid Man I Picture with an Axe Sticking Out of His Head: Your drill gun battery died.

No, I did not ask why he was using my drill gun.

Yes, I told him to just forget about it and that I would finish up from here (this was just for attaching the changing table top to the dresser so it wasn't a big deal and my give a damn had run out) and thanks so much for all their effort.

And then I tipped them. Because, hey, the crib actually was assembled by the end of the ordeal...although there is a missing mattress. So there's that to deal with tomorrow.

I'm emotionally available for the cocktail I can't have.

Making Great Strides

Y'all...the nursery is done!

If you consider this done:


Which some people may say is not exactly baby-ready, but I think is pretty close because The Bean can totally share the dog crate with Ginger (the thunderstorm freak out dog) and the two items I've been vying to have in the nursery from the word jumpstreet arrived yesterday.

So I'm all ready.

You're going to need to brace yourselves for the adorable.

First up, we have our polar bear bookends. These will be handy for holding up books AND throwing at visitors who overstay their welcome.


But this next item(s), I have been crushing on since I saw them in a store in San Francisco in January. Until I picked them up and saw the price. Then I was mad at them for at least 10 whole minutes. So I left them in the store to think about what they had done.

Instead I was the one left thinking (read: obsessing) for the past 4 months. So much so, that I not only paid the same price for them, but I also paid for shipping and handling! Yea!

But come on, can you even stand it?


While mostly a show piece, these are also going to be exceptional at poking out eyes, stabbing exposed, delicate flesh and teething (they're teak, so don't worry, the ducks will be fine).

Nursery: check.

A Lose-Lose Situation

If you could just gouge my eyeballs out with a melon baller and shove lit dynamite in the empty sockets, I would greatly appreciate it.

I am in the registry/planning the nursery/can't put off buying things any longer phase of the pregnancy. Luckily this combines some of my favorite things like shopping for crap I have no interest in, spending ridiculous amounts of money for things that will last about a year and completely disassembling my house to find new places for the crap we've been storing in the "office/one day will be a nursery/mostly a place we hide the stuff we don't feel like putting away" room.

So I'm in a real healthy place right now.

One would think at least the registry part would be fun to do. "Look! You can go to a website, click things you need and other people buy it and send it to you."

I'm on hour 876 of attempting to create my registry. That's how well registering is going for me.

The one consistent piece of advice I have gotten from friends already in the mommy world is: Don't buy too much stuff. You don't use most of it. And less shopping is one piece of advice I whole-heartedly can get behind.

So I had a brilliant plan. BRILLIANT, I tell you!

I sent out an email to my closest girlfriends asking the following three questions:

1. What is the one item you couldn't possibly live without?
2. What handful of items were the biggest waste of money that you never use?
3. What do I have to, can't live without, simply must know when I'm setting up the nursery?

How streamlined of me, I thought foolishly. I'm going to have the world's most efficient nursery and can use the rest of the registry for things like All-Clad pans and Le Creuset pots.

Ha.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

I received a 10-page missive back on the things I would be needing, the girlfriends' reviews of each item, about 10 billion contradictions on what I really need and don't need and links to 50 katrillion sites I should definitely check out before making any decisions.

OK...I'm playing this up for funny for sure. Well it really included all those things, but their information was beyond helpful. Unfortunately, I've fallen down the rabbit's hole of research and can't get out.

The process goes like this:

• Jen opens up Amazon to start registering for each and every item listed on the 10-page document
• First item: Car seat
• About to register for the 'approved by all moms' car seat when 10 emails come in about how car seat laws have just changed and now kids need to be in a rear-facing car seat until they are 35 years old.
• Old car seat recommendations no longer applies.
• Spend 3 hours reading every Amazon review on car seats.
• Decide I still can't make an informed decision so go register for Consumer Reports to read their 1,000 reviews on car seats.
• Ultimately determine no car seat is safe enough, comfortable enough, easy enough, car seat-y enough.
• Go back to original car seat recommended and register for the one made to hold a 35 year-old.

I wish I was making this up.

10 pages of this.

And this is just the registry...I STILL need to buy baby furniture. (Which I like to make infinitely more impossible by insisting it be eco-friendly AND cute--the nerve of me.)

We're at the point, where I'm considering leaving the dog crate in the nursery and using that as a 3-in-1 crib, changing table, storage unit.