Feathering the Nest - Part I

About two months ago, Jo's nesting hormones started kicking in. These, as I now know, were the gentle ones. The later ones weren't half as polite.

To appease the hormones, we spent an afternoon at the new Ikea in Round Rock. It was the full deal - including a lunch of Swedish meatballs and Daim pie. And furniture for the nursery. We borrowed Raj's station wagon and loaded a whole room full of furniture into it (amazing, what you can do with shit that packs flat).

When we got it all back home, we first had to get rid of the stuff that was already in the baby room. That meant moving two heavy filing cabinets from Scandinavia (beginning to notice the pattern? Furniture must come from the Arctic end of Europe) to the room above the garage. We dragged them to the bottom of the stairs and hoped that the elves would move them upstairs. But there they lay, day after day. Jo was very understanding for a long time. Then, one Saturday morning, she asked me if I had a plan to move the teak-veneer-covered-lead-weights upstairs.

I told her I did. Coincidentally, I had laid awake the night before hatching the perfect plan. It was time to act.

I first went to Walmart and then to Toys-backwards"R"-Us to find one of those cheap small skateboards. Quinn has one, and if he lived any closer, I would have pinched it. As luck would have it, the stores were out. So I went to the Home Depot and bought the following:

- a furniture dolly
- two 8 foot 2x4's
- three 8 foot sections of 1 inch wide 1/4 inch thick square-edged trim
- three steel brackets

I carefully put all this in Jo's 325 (while people in trucks at the Home Depot loading area snickered) and drove back to my garage. There I took the dolly apart and put it back so that it was much narrower - essentially a stakeboard. It was during this operation that the neighbor accosted me with the breast feeding conversation.

I trimmed the two 2x4's to the right length so that, when butted up lengthwise, they were a tad longer than the stairs up to the room over the garage. I then attached the 2x4s to each other using the steel brackets and screws. Finally, I nailed the trim to either side of the 2x4's to make a ramp with railings. To add an elegant touch, I cut the bottom edge of the whole contraption at a bevel so that it met the floor at a nice miter when the ramp sat on the steps.

I rolled the skinnyfied dolly up to the bottom of my ramp, and dragged the first cabinet onto it. Then I got behind it and slowly pushed it up the ramp and soon it was all the way upstairs. I followed with the second cabinet, but didn't realize that it was a good bit heavier (it had lateral filing drawers which just wouldn't come off - a safety feature so that you don't end up with a filing cabinet drawer induced foot amputation). I got it halfway up the ramp when I realized that I wasn't strong enough to go the whole way. I grunted rather loudly in an effort to summon up hitherto hidden strengths. That didn't help. I slowly started sliding back down. I realized with a growing certainty that my near future held the strong prospect of being run over by a fucking heavy filing cabinet as it tried to beat me to the bottom of the stairs. I felt much regret at not having asked Gunaraj to help me carry the cabinets upstairs. Other random thoughts flashed through several brain cells.

At that moment, the hormones decided they had enough. Jo appeared behind me and shoved the cabinet, myself, and most of my carefully constructed ramp contraption up the steps to the floor above.

I declared victory for myself and mankind. I defended my actions by drawing upon the evolutionary inevitability of tool-building. My peeps didn't drag the mighty mammoth down by sheer strength. They used their little grey cells and tools to get us where we are. Etcetera. Jo wasn't impressed.

But the cabinets are upstairs and we are ready for Feathering the Nest - Part II. And I am damn proud of my opposable thumbs.