Chair(s)

 

I wrote this immediately after reading mydangblog’s “Prone to Being Prone,” and expected to post the same day. But I had to stop to do something else and didn’t get back, and then forgot, and so here I am, over a month later, finally getting it out there. Not that it’s time-sensitive or anything.

Warning: Blog posts are supposed to be 300-500 words long, and this is a lot longer than that, so if you’re not in the mood for that, I recommending reading “Prone to Being Prone” and leaving this one alone.

Before moving on, I’d like to thank everyone who reads any of my posts. That really is going beyond the call of duty.

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I intended to work on my slowly budding novel today, but I don’t feel well and the brain isn’t working. Once I start, writing fiction can be fun (relatively speaking), but when the brain sulls, the process is misery.

It’s easier to slap down a blog post. Readers are more forgiving than editors and critique partners, and since I frequently write about my most embarrassing moments, I have plenty of material: for example, there’s cooking Thanksgiving dinner a day late and vowing to never again bring raw poultry into my kitchen, and buying and not assembling my new recumbent exercise bike, and getting through eight (then nine; now ten) months of strict isolation, and my default topic—the cats.

But after reading mydangblog. I decided to write about chairs.

There’s nothing embarrassing about chairs, but I have enough to say about them for several posts. However, I’m going to stuff it all into this one.

Once upon a time, I had a recliner. It had been my mom’s, and it was a good one, and comfortable, but as it aged, it began to deteriorate. Hyperfocusing elsewhere, I was oblivious until I noticed the fabric on the footrest had separated and was about to fall off. In addition, the chair’s chassis had become rickety.

For a long time, I’d coveted a chair I’d seen at IKEA. I’d never sat in it, but I knew it was comfortable because the design displayed excellent lumbar support. My back cried out for lumbar support. I declined to drive David’s new car because the seats lacked lumbar support; the seats in my older Chevy Cavalier allowed my lower back to drive in comfort.

So we went to IKEA and I sat in the chair and wanted to stay there forever but stood and took it and its hassock home. And I just enjoyed the heck out of that chair.

The cats were wider than the armrests, so we put a stool on one side and a piano bench on the other. One armrest made a perfect mousepad.

It wasn’t beautiful or fancy, but my back loved it. Problem solved.

Until the chair started to list to the right. That’s because I listed to the right. I’ve never been into sitting up straight. In fact, until a certain age, I wasn’t into chairs at all. My preferred positions were either lying down—which is how I got the idea for this topic from mydangblog—or sitting in sort of a yoga position, except with my legs folded up more compactly, and the rest of me slumped over. My family used to marvel at my ability to fold up like that, and my ability to think at the same time: most of my algebra homework was done while I was sitting in that position on the floor in front of the television. Unfortunately, the best I can do now is slump.

Anyway, I didn’t fold up in the IKEA chair, but I curled up a bit. To be accurate, I sat crooked. When my right shoulder went wonky, and I knew it wasn’t another torn rotator cuff because I hadn’t been to water aerobics for years (water aerobics is where I get two rotator cuff injuries, same shoulder), David said it must be the chair. After I wailed long and loudly enough about my poor arm, he said I must have a new chair. He wanted to buy a recliner at Walmart.

I said a Walmart chair would fall apart pronto, and I needed something sturdier. He said he would go to Walmart and buy a chair. I said I would need to try the chair before buying it, but I didn’t feel like shopping around. I’d recently begun chemo and didn’t have much energy. I repeated that a Walmart chair would fall apart. He said he would go to Walmart and buy a chair. I said it would fall apart. He said I needed a new chair NOW: He would buy a cheap chair and I could buy an expensive one when the cheap one fell apart.

But I insisted on approving the purchase, so I summoned the gumption to accompany him to Walmart, where I sat in a recliner. It was too big. I swamped around in it, and there was a handle on the side that lowered the footrest. My sore shoulder didn’t like the handle. I sat in another. It was a bit smaller, and it didn’t have a handle. It took leg power to lower the footrest. My legs didn’t always want to push that hard. It also had armrests that raised to show convenient storage compartments where I could stash things, such as my Kindle, and forget where I’d put them.

Those were the only recliners available.

Full disclosure: I didn’t play nice during the shopping trip. When I muttered “fall apart” for the fourth time, David remarked the chair had the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, which meant quality. I muttered something I hope was unintelligible. David puts up with a lot.

The store ordered the chair and had it delivered to us. David opened the box. It was the wrong chair, the big one with the handle. Again, I wasn’t in the mood to play nice. I pouted. I think I cried.

David said we would get the correct chair, but he wasn’t going to box up the wrong one and send it back, so he would go to Walmart, buy the other chair, have it delivered, and sit in the wrong one himself.

Up to that point, he’d been sitting on his old futon, the first embarrassing element, which I’d been lobbying to replace since he’d brought it to our marriage twelve years before. It had no lumbar support, but he can sit anywhere. He’s tall and lanky and can fold himself up more compactly than I ever dreamed of doing.

My new chair arrived, along with its Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. I sat. It worked.

So we sat along and sat along, until, a couple of years later, my arms began to itch. A lot. When the oncologist sent me to a dermatologist for another matter, she glanced at my arm and said, “How long have you had eczema?” I didn’t know I had eczema. She said no more about it, so I guess I still have eczema, and that’s the reason my arms itch now and then. I should have asked for a prescription for the drug they advertise on TV.

The point is, my chair’s fabric had begun to irritate my arms. David suggested we exchange chairs. Wrong chair’s upholstery was smooth. It wasn’t leather, of course; it wasn’t even Naugahyde. But it didn’t make me itch.

So the sitting in the wrong chair solved that problem. David extended the handle with a piece of PVC pipe so I could use it without pain (and complaint). Since the chair was larger, there was room for two, almost. Ernest sat on the right armrest-mousepad, pulled on my sleeve, oozed over, draped himself across the keyboard, and sent emails prematurely. To type, I scooted the computer to the left armrest.

Suddenly another problem arose, and this time I mean problem. (I just counted, and that was the fourth time I used the word problem. Now I’ve used it five times. Sorry, but it’s the only word that applies.)

One morning in a senior citizen (old people) memoir class, my hip went out. And I mean out. David had to help me from the classroom to the car, and from the car to the apartment, and everyone within a quarter of a mile heard me yelping with every step. I didn’t care.

At home I collapsed into wrong chair and called my massage therapist, who is part genius, part angel. The next day, she ran her thumbs down my spine and said, “When you work on your laptop, what’s right in front of you? The laptop?” I said the cat. She said, “I thought so.”

She fixed my back, which fixed my hip. I stopped sitting crooked and kept the laptop in front of me. I taught Ernest not to sit on my lap while I typed. If you’ve ever convinced a cat to do something he doesn’t want to do, you know that wasn’t fun for either of us. But he finally got the message. He continues to sit on the armrest, almost, and lay his head on the keypad, and sometimes he hits the Enter key and sends an unfinished email, or scrolls down down down, but the laptop stays directly in front of me, and so far my hip has stayed in place.

David uses the other recliner, just as he did my wrong one, and as he did the late unlamented futon, sitting upright with his feet flat on the floor. I don’t know why anyone would do that than when he could practically lie down. When Ernest sits on the floor or the window sill and gazes at him, David sets the laptop aside and gives the cat his full attention. David’s hip and back are fine. Ernest is happy.

We’ve had these Walmart chairs for nearly five years, and neither has collapsed. But my original reservations are proving at least partially justified.

I think I just reached the totally embarrassing part.

Several weeks ago, I found a brown speck of something on my neck. The next day some brown specks fell from my hair onto my shoulders. By the end of the week, I’d decided the shower of specks might be something worth identifying.

Then I looked at the pictures of the tiara (see “Pearls and Teeth and Abject Mortification,” 11/5/2020) and saw the source of said specks. My upholstery is shedding. As I suspected, the fabric is not Naugahyde. The hyde of the Nauga does not decompose.

Decomposition is not a deal-breaker. I could put a slip cover over it, if I cared enough. So far, I don’t. David and I are the only ones who see it. If predictions of medical experts are correct, and I believe they are, we’re the only ones who’ll see it until at least January 2022. So unless the brown faux-Nauga-dandruff becomes intolerable, I’ll leave things alone.

Then another complication arose. My knees. A couple of months ago, almost overnight, they stopped wanting to bend overmuch. As in when I stand up. I attributed the change to having fallen on the left one in 1990 and again in 1991 (and again in 2020, although I count that as being knocked down by a box I was trying to open); plus, I have loose joints; plus, let’s face it, they’re getting on up there. In fact, I think they’re older than the rest of me. Maybe I folded them up too often.

But last week the doctor—bless his heart, and I mean that sincerely—said one of my meds might be making them stiff. I’ll keep the injury excuse for one knee, but I now blame the rest on pills instead of on age.

Where this impacts the chair thing: I have to push myself up. Wrong recliner is soft and squashy, and so am I, and when I sit, it depresses. It’s difficult to rise from a dining room chair at a 90-degree angle, mainly after I’ve sat too long, but from the recliner there are several more degrees to negotiate.

David wants to help, but he can’t pull me up. It just doesn’t work that way. I have to push. He can only make sure that once I’m up, I don’t go back down again.

So I’ve developed a method: rocking. I rock back and forth, building up speed and force, and when the time is right, or seems like it, I push myself onto my feet, stand jackknifed for a few seconds to make sure I’m stable, and then slowly progress to full upright stance. I’ve become so good at it that David doesn’t [always] hold his breath, watching, ready to jump to my aid.

There’s a toll, however. Last night I was rocking fiercely back and forth, gaining momentum, almost ready to attempt an ascent, when I glanced to my right and saw Ernest, eyes wide, ears back, clinging for dear life to the armrest. I usually warn him of what’s coming, but he’d been so still and quiet that I’d forgotten he was there.

I felt just terrible. Terrible for scaring him, and terrible for laughing at his distress. And terrible that I had to stop and start all over. Standing up really isn’t the jolliest part of my day. I like to get it over asap.

And David has another suggestion pending: a chair lift. More specifically, since wrong recliner is desquamating at an increasingly rapid pace, he suggests a chair that stands up and dumps me out.

I didn’t want one. I’m only fifteen years old. I want to stand up by myself. I’m not ready to give up. I’ll ride that stationary bike to El Paso and back and get myself in shape. If I’m going to stand up, I’ll stand up under my own steam, thank you very much.

Then I thought about my uncle’s mother-in-law, Mrs. C. She was a lot older than fifteen, a lot older than my birth certificate says I am, and her knees were in worse shape than mine are. She hobbled around the house, but that was the extent of her mobility. She was essentially housebound. My aunt proposed the obvious solution:

“Mother, we should get you a wheelchair.”

—”NO. They say, once you start using a wheelchair, you never stop.”

“But with a wheelchair, you could get out of the house.”

—”NO. They say, once you sit down in one of those things, you never get up.”

“But, Mother, you wouldn’t use it every day. Just when we go out. We could go shopping. We could go to the grocery store. We could go to the fabric store.  We could go to restaurants. We could stay out all day if we wanted.”

—”NO. I’m not riding around in any chair. I’d never walk again.”

I didn’t want a wheelchair either, but attending a film festival in a mostly empty mall in which we had to walk practically to Florida to get to the theater, I was ready for the change. If fact, David was so ready that he found the office and borrowed a wheelchair. At home, we rented, then bought, one.

Then the doctor asked if I wanted a prescription for a rolling walker. David said, “Yes!” It works better than a cane, since you have to learn to use a cane–to establish a rhythm–and I stagger around instead. I am making peace with having to use the rolling walker. I don’t usually use it the house.

I used it when we got our first COVID vaccination last Thursday. I shouldn’t have. I walked fine, and sat once or twice, which was helpful, but I’d been told not to take ibuprofin beforehand, and by the time I got home, my knees were a wreck. Along with the rest of me. Walking for exercise is not an option. David didn’t tell me I could take ibuprofin after the shot, so I waited about forty-eight hours. A wreck.

Yesterday David purchased a lightweight wheelchair. Walmart. I said nothing about falling apart. He said nothing about the Good Housekeeping seal. It’s lighter than the plain one and easier to get into the car–I didn’t know he had trouble with the other one. I can’t use wheels to maneuver it myself, but the one time I tried that with the other chair, in Home Depot, I ended up where I hadn’t planned, so I don’t care. If I have a problem, I’ll stand up and walk. Ibuprofin helps.

That is my story about chairs.

It’s too long, and it’s boring, and it needs to be edited, but that’s a lot of trouble. So there.

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Re: the chair that dumps you out. We agreed the kind that fits in the recliner looks uncomfortable, and I might need the kind that stands up and dumps you out. After hearing from a former student who had a rising-up chair, however, that a recent power failure left her chair immobile, and her stuck lying down, I’m wondering. Lying down until the electricity returns might be more difficult that standing up. I doubt I could roll out.

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THE END, FINALLY

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Image of IKEA-type chair by Kari Shea from Pixabay
Image of giraffe by blende 12 from Pixabay
Image of leather chair OpenClipArt-Vectors from Pixabay
Image by Gerhard G. from Pixabay
Image of ginger cat by Films42 from Pixabay

Pixabay license