The Princess and The Pea Have Met Their Match!

Since I seem to be in a rather bloggy (did I just make a new word? Why, yes, I did!) mood today, I have decided to share the story of "The Day I Helped My Parents Put Together Their New Bed." which occurred all of - yesterday.

I rush home from work, change, feed the cat (you ate a whole bowl while I was gone?! Tubby!) and run out the front door. I make it to Mommy and Daddy Dearest's home at a little after six. We eat (mom and I in the kitchen and dad from the comforts of his new recliner in the other room - yelling news tidbits to us over mouthfuls of spaghetti)and then march upstairs to assemble new cherry four-poster bed.

We push, pound, strain and wiggle to get the little metal latches to line up and slide into the headboard and footboard. It won't fit. So dad goes and gets vaseline from the bathroom. Yup - in my parent's bedroom I am now lubing up the bed pieces to make them fit together.

While I'm turning red in the face and covered with slime, my sister calls - from Richmond - as if to punctuate the fact that I, the younger sister, am now the only "grunt" left to work. "Get home, Bitch, and help me out!" I yell to her when mom stands over me with the speakerphone.

Finally, after much lubing, pounding, cursing and wishing to be sent back to my REAL parents (I was convinced, at that time, that I was adopted from nice people, like serial killers, to come live with these crazies.) we got the bed together.

We put the supports on :

Mom: "Dammit, Ben, slide that one piece over that other one and then move that other part to the middle! NO! Watch! No - like this!" Sidebar: I was twelve before I figured out that my father's first name was not, in fact, "Dammit."

Dad: "Which one? This one? This one? Huh?"

Mom: "THAT piece goes over - NO - not like that - I'll do IT myself!" She hops over the bed rails and stumbles over to my dad where she begins to gesture more emphatically. This is her way of "doing it herself."

Me: "Dad, it's like a puzzle-"

Mom: "Don't tell him that! He'll never figure it out then!"

Finally, all is settled and we shove the box springs on to the frame followed by the mattress.

The bed, as a whole, is now  towering three feet off the floor.

All three of us collapse into hysterics.

I go home hoping that my parents don't roll off the bed in the middle of the night and plummet to their doom...