The past week was a roller coaster. A week ago, I got a last-minute notification that I had a show in town, so I put all my other plans on hold and went, which meant I moved my Saturday plans to Sunday. Monday at work was stressful, because even though we work seven days a week, everybody waited until then to call or email and complain. Still, I kept up my diet regimen and took my vitamins, and since I have been working from home since 2020, my lucky stars have been keeping me fit.
That luck ended on Tuesday. I awoke with a dry throat, which I attributed to the changes in the weather from 50 degrees one day to just above 30 the next. The discomfort continued into Wednesday and Thursday, but no other symptoms presented themselves.
They made their debut on Friday. I called a friend of mine, to whose house I was supposed to go for holiday festivities that evening, and informed her that I felt I was not fit to go out, so we rescheduled. That added to what was already becoming a rough start to a December weekend.
Though my nose was acting as if only allergies were affecting me, nothing prepared me for what I’m calling a stealth cold. Every time I’ve gotten a cold, I have had Niagara Falls for a nose for the first two to three days. This rendition of the virus apparently likes to present symptoms in reverse order. I had two appointments on Friday, so I found myself masking up (which my doctor thanked me for when I explained why I was doing so). My nose began to run, and the sensation of a creature clawing its way up my throat began to dog the entire afternoon.
To add insult to injury, it started raining. Heavily.
I headed home and, after some deliberation, decided to run out to the pharmacy five minutes away to grab some cold medication. There was none at home; I hadn’t needed so much as a cough drop for over three years.
The morning came, and my normal Saturday afternoon plans were canceled (by somebody else), so I was stuck at home sneezing, running and feeling a bit dragged down. Most people would probably snuggle up to some hot beverages and cheesy television fare.
I decided to assemble a book shelf.
This is one of those Sauder DIY projects in a flat box with alphabetized parts, a manual and a bag of hardware. Having just finished National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) on Thursday with over 51,000 words in spite of feeling less than optimal, I figured doing something constructive surely beat sitting around letting calories permanently attach themselves like barnacles to my frame.
The instructions included a QR code and URL for a website to watch the assembly of the product. Like most determinedly dense Americans, I went old school and used just the manual. Also, the last time I assembled a piece of furniture, the people in the visual examples missed steps, and I nearly broke two glass doors which I fought World War III to get fitted.
The tools I needed to bring to this project were a measuring tape, a Phillips screwdriver (the x-shaped type), and a hammer. The instructions specified to leave power tools out of the picture, thank goodness. They don’t know that, even if I did need one, all of them are from the year zero because my father owned them, and darned if I know how to use them.
I have never seen screws and bolts like the ones in this project; they’re extraordinary inventions from the obviously brilliant minds of those whom Mensa grants a special knowledge test for admission. The stuff was incredibly easy to work with, and I managed to construct the frame and fascia with no difficulty. I slid items together and screwed prong A’s into slot B’s easily.
The back of the shelf included a folded fake woodgrain panel which needed to be unfolded and tacked down with nails. I broke out the tape measure (also my father’s) to find that it had become jammed and only extended to about sixteen inches and had torn. The adhesive he had used to reattach the tape after it had broken, dried out and snapped. Being determined to make lemonade from the lemon of a gadget, I took the partial stub of what must have been several feet of lost measuring tape and worked out the placement of the nails to hold the back onto the piece.
This is where my mother’s kitchen hammer came into the picture. It’s metal and has a handle which unscrews to reveal additional tools. She used that hammer for many little disasters in the absence of my father, and now I tapped firmly away at evenly-spaced nails, measured lovingly twice.
I ended up with four extra nails. Either the instructions were missing something, or my math sucks worse than I originally thought. However, the back is securely nailed, and with the placement of the shelf inside, I ended up with a finished project.
The day didn’t go to waste, and I have a place for more books (in the future, maybe one of mine). Meanwhile, the stealth cold seems to be powering down, and I’ll see by the morning whether the whole weekend is shot or not.
I did buy two of those shelves. . . .
Susan's Scribblings the Blog 