Poof! Happened and So Did Phooey!

Posted on by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized

Mr. Frank Churchill did not come. ~ Jane Austen, Emma

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Emma was not at this time in a state of spirits to care really

about Mr. Frank Churchill’s not coming… ~ Jane Austen, Emma

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Remember what I said about the furniture and assorted stuff in my living room maybe going Poof! and disappearing?

A couple of things did.

The recliner, for one. David, who normally sits beside it, got a long look at it head-on and asked whether we should dispose of it immediately, before getting a replacement.

Oh, my, yes.

Poof! It disappeared.

The chair was a good and faithful servant, but it should have departed about the same time George W. Bush did.

The search for adequate lumbar support that followed lasted the rest of Monday and all of Tuesday,  and it wasn’t pretty. I despaired of being able to get out of bed the next day without a forklift. But I could and did. And the living room looked better. And that was a good thing.

Tuesday night, after listening to considerable moaning and groaning on my part, David asked whether we should shop for a chair Wednesday instead of waiting until Friday, and we did, and bought the one I’d coveted ever since I first tried it out, about four years ago, and he assembled it and the accompanying footstool, and, after I’d tried to poison us all by spraying the cushions with Scotchgard (I’m waiting for people who know me well to say, “Why did you get beige?”), in an inadequately ventilated space (It was raining), things turned out pretty well. I stopped moaning and groaning and concentrated on keeping Ernest from making biscuits on the nubbly fabric.

So far he hasn’t expressed much interest in sitting there. He’s tried it only once. After about fifteen seconds he moved to the nearby rocking chair. Relocation was possibly due to the rocker’s new green seat cushion, purchased during our shopping trip–it matches his eyes–but I like to think he responded to my schoolteacher glare.

William, who does not respond to schoolteacher glares, in the new IKEA bathtub
William, who does not respond to schoolteacher glares, enjoying the lumbar support of the new IKEA bathtub

As to the other item that went Poof!–it didn’t exactly disappear, because it was never here in the first place.

Like Mr. Frank Churchill, the carpet cleaner, who was scheduled for “sometime after 9:00 a.m.,” did not come.

Unlike Emma, I did care really that the carpet cleaner did not come. I waited for him almost as long as Emma waited for Mr. Frank Churchill.

And I waited with a backache.

Well. It seems the carpet cleaner canceled because of the rain. That was sensible.

But somehow, through no fault of his, I didn’t get word until my ability to extend immediate forgiveness had passed the point of no return. Too little sleep compounded by the mother of all backaches propelled me in the direction of the most convenient scapegoat, and the carpet cleaner was first in line.

So file that part of the day under Phooey!

As soon as my new chair was ready for occupancy, however, sanity returned and unconditional forgiveness reigned supreme. I am once again a veritable Pollyanna, spreading gladness to all I meet.

Which is another good thing, because the carpet cleaner is scheduled to come next Monday “sometime after 9:00 a.m.”

William resting on an old blanket covering the new IKEA footstool
William resting on an old blanket covering the new IKEA footstool

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5 thoughts on “Poof! Happened and So Did Phooey!”

  1. You just stay out of my house. My recliner will never go! I do plan to get it recovered, when the time and finances are right. But it will never go poof unless it just literally falls apart.

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    1. Don’t worry, I harbor no designs on your recliner. The seat of mine had begun to give on the right side when I sat down. It was only a matter of time before disaster struck, and I didn’t want to be present for the decline and fall. Anyway, I think I saw your recliner once, and it looked perfectly respectable, not like the thing that lurked in my living room.

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  3. Did you sign up to get posts via email? Or does this blog go just to your reader? That’s the only thing I can think of that might cause what’s happening. Of course, I don’t know exactly how these things work. (The chair was weird. I should have taken a picture of it in its last days.)

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