Assembling Furniture: A Tragicomedy in Three Acts

Tragedy for me, comedy for you.

Act 1.

 

For all those veterans of the furniture assembly process, what was the most difficult piece of furniture to assemble?  A seven-foot tall entertainment console?  A full length sofa?  A king-sized bed with  shelves on the headboard and drawers under the bed?

Early in the morning, I decided to pick the easiest job first, then work my way up.  Surely the toilet seat would be the easiest, no?

Forty-five minutes later, the OLD toilet seat was still screwed on to the toilet.  I mean, paking syet, how the hell did they put this on?  I kept twisting and twisting the screws, until finally I took a steak knife to them (buti na lang the screws were plastic).  I managed to loosen them a bit, but now there were all sorts of brown material coming off onto my fingers.  Don’t think about what they are (syet).  Don’t think about where they come from (syet).  Just keep working on the screw.  When this is all over, you can shower.  You can shower five times.  You can shower five times, then exfoliate with muriatic acid…

Act 2.

So after all that struggling with the furniture (let’s see: bed, mirror, sofa, coffee table, shelves, occasional table, toilet seat), it was time for me to take stock of all the cardboard in the apartment.  IT’S A LOT OF CARDBOARD.  Unfortunately, my building does not have separate bins for recycling. 

Dahil mabait ako, I go over the Department of Sanitation website and check the city’s recycling programs.  Paper and cardboard in clear bags, tin, glass and plastic bottles in blue bags.  Okay, so I’m good.  However, large cardboard boxes have to be flattened and tied up together.  Bring everything down to the curb on Monday night for collection early Tuesday morning.

Okay, this is a piece of cake.  Flatten the boxes before tying them up.  So I piled the boxes up, which were already rather flat to begin with (thank you, IKEA!) and started stepping on them to make them flatter.  Hey I can do dance moves, too!  ¯Oooh baby when you talk like that, you make a woman go mad.  So be wise and keep on reading the signs of my body…¯

I was shaking my truthful hips (i.e. they don’t lie) so enthusiastically that I did not notice that one of the cardboard sheets slipped out from under me.  The last thing I remembered before crashing sideways to the floor was “PAKING SYEEEEE…”

Act 3

I opened my eyes and wiggled my fingers and my toes.  Good, I’m not paralyzed.  Days like these, I’m grateful that I am pleasantly plump.  It’s like having lots of bubble wrap around your bones and internal organs.  Still, my right side hurts like hell.

So I drag myself to the kitchen to console myself with the munggo guisado that I cooked to perfection the previous day.  With lots and lots of pork, of course – my mother used to put a whole leg of lechon in her munggo while we all pretended that this was a healthy vegetable side dish.

So anyway, I put some in a bowl and stuck it in the microwave.  While waiting, I turned to the rice cooker.  Hmm, it’s empty, I could have sworn there were leftovers…oh well, waiting 30 minutes for the rice to cook won’t kill me…

The rice bin was empty.  Naubusan ako ng bigas.

PAKING SYET.

P.S. Photos of our new digs.  I'll get to putting up the frames.  Eventually.