(In which our heroine is united with her long-lost love at last, kind of, and with a few bumps along the way....)

The Desk, pt 2

When last I left you, I was awaiting the arrival of my new desk. Yes, the one I bought (at great expense to my person) to complete the overhauling of the denette.

Yesterday while I was being bullied on the phone by the inimitable (thank God) Ray, I was told at the end of it all that I should expect my desk delivery (have a husband ready!) sometime during the lunch hour. Apparently along with not knowing where I live or where I work, Ray knows nothing about how lunches at TheCompanyIWorkFor go either, because our lunches between the three of us are spread out over three hours, from 11:30 to 2:30. But I took the information given me and got ready for delivery.

This morning I found out that apparently Ray knows nothing about lunch whatsoever, because as I was getting ready for work at 8:55, I got a phone call. It was Mr Delivery Man with my desk. He was at a business in the next town over, and heading my way.

Now, let me just say at this point that Mr Delivery Man, who told me his name but I'll be damned if I can remember it, was a very nice and friendly man. No Ray, this guy. Well, no Ray, but he did tell me that this desk was going to be a handful, and that he was indeed driving a tractor trailer, and well, did I have a pickup truck? He actually asked me if I had a pickup truck.

I replied that no, my imaginary husband had taken my imaginary truck off into the woods to go hunting, but I did mention podmobile2 and how it was a station wagon, albeit a small one. He said that might "work just fine," as although this desk was apparently the weight of the sun, it was relatively small in size, so why didn't I meet him somewhere and we'd load that desk into my vehicle and he'd go with me to my house and we'd get it in the denette. And I was already not liking this scenario much, seeing as how it had me sucked into the world of furniture delivery, a realm of which I know nothing about, and I didn't even have the heart to mention that after my surgery I'm not really supposed to lift anything of note anyway. I do lift things, so I figured it was kind of slackish to mention it now.

So I hopped into podmobile2 and went to the assigned meeting place, and you'll never guess where that turned out to be. It was the exact same parking lot where I let Walter the mouse run free and find a new home. I didn't see Walter, and can only assume that he's set up housekeeping somewhere on the grassy knoll by the parking lot. I did, however, see Mr Delivery Man drive up in his monster tractor trailer and pull up beside me.

And really, folks, he was a nice guy. He guided me and my car to the back of his truck just so, so we could transfer the desk into podmobile2. I got out of the car, he took a side, I took a side, and it became very apparent in approximately 2 seconds that this was not going to work. All it took was one "ugh" from me and Mr Delivery Man said, "Nope, we've got to find another way to do this." And I have to tell you that my heart sank a bit when he started suggesting calling someone at another company to deliver it, which I envisioned taking another week while it went in transit to the other person and that person got his truck and I found a new imaginary husband with a pickup, and, well, you get the idea.

But finally, after all that, after Ray and the bullying and the meeting in Walter's new home, and the whole thing, Mr Delivery Man suddenly came out with the only logical thing I've heard in the past two days. "Why don't I just follow you back to your house and see if there's any place I can pull this tractor trailer off the road?" So simple, and yet so brilliant.

"Absolutely," I said, and he followed me down the road apiece to the Poderosa, where he pulled his behemoth vehicle into the parking lot of a building three doors down from the house. I was no more out of my car and saw him loping down the sidewalk with my desk on a trolley. (And please, don't ask how he got it out of the truck and onto a trolley when the two of us couldn't seem to do that in the parking lot. I don't know, I don't want to know, and if I think about it too much it makes my head go fuzzy.)

And so Mr Delivery Man, who I'm thinking of asking to be my imaginary husband, rolled that 250 pound piece of happiness into the driveway, slid it up the two steps into the house, and laid it in the floor for me. And wouldn't even accept a tip for all his trouble, even after I insisted. So I ended up keeping the tip for myself, for I figure I went through a fair amount of trouble too, and I'm not so noble.

I've got my desk. It's sitting in the box in my floor, but I've got it. Mr M's coming tomorrow to help me put it together, but I'm dying to get at it. So if you'll excuse me, I have a 250 pound box to open.

Let's just hope the assembly instructions aren't imaginary.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Two glasses of wine, one shitty movie, a cup of coffee, and some crab rangoons. That's Friday here at the Pod.