Clean Up on Aisle 24!

My dear buddy WhippedBoy got permission from the wife (heh) to come help me out and play delivery man for my new bedroom stuff -- a bed and two side tables.

In infinitely bad form, I, the needy friend requesting driving and moving services, completely forgot to buy beer. Luckily, WB was hungry, so we popped into the Ikea cafeteria ("restaurant"? surely you jest...) for the meatball plates and beer. Eyes being bigger than our bellies, we thought 15 meatballs each. I mean, they're not big meat balls, right? And dinner for two with beer for $21. Deal! Ikea, Svedish for kommon sense."

So, we were wrong. Both of us got 10 down, which left 10 remaining. "Hey! You can take 'em to work!"

Him, "Why, yes I can! I wouldn't eat them at home, you know, where there's choice and all, but at work? Sure!"

I grabbed a container from the staffer there and we loaded it up with the meatballs and gravy, putting the kibbosh on the lingonberry sauce (mm, lingonberries! yeah... right). One of them clear plastic takeout containers most commonly used for salads with the fold-over lids that never really stay closed? Too big and bulky.

Off we headed to find the bed.

We grabbed a cart, put the meatballs on, and started looking for my goodies. He found the right "bin" (there are no bins, just shelves... friggin' Ikea... it's called a section or something) and I, feeling energetic and all, decided to run the cart over.

Turns out the takeout containers, about three times larger than the meatballs, is very, very aerodynamic. There was a simultaneous whoosh-splat sound that Foley editors everywhere need to dial into their soundboards, and a sickeningly realization hit as I mentally knew what just happened to the meatballs.

I turned around and saw a landscape of meatballs, scattered over a 6-foot radius, with gravy hurtled everywhere, and just lost it. I just laughed my ass off. WB just about busted a gut too. I can't for the life of me remember my utterances, nor WB's, but I know the Asian guy on the other side of WB was cracking up, too. "Clean up on aisle 24!" I've never gotten to say it before, not in real life. How fun!

We discussed whether to take the meatballs with us (but with considerable gravy left dotted over the aisle), but then the realization hit that that'd be a safety hazard. People like to run with them carts, you know. So we left the meatballs nicely piled in the container, and the lid open so no one thinks it's a take-home giftie.

Then, in the lineup at the till, I told him I was gonna 'fess up. "Really?" And I told him the method behind the madness of my life: I like to say shit to people just so I can see their reaction. Life's too short. Facial expressions can last a lifetime, y'know? It's fun. So, yeah, I'm feeling like a twit for spewing gravy and meatballs all over aisle 24, but I'll never have another chance to admit it and fully embrace the twittiness. :)

'Course, I had a boring poker-faced cashier, but hey. Sometimes, admitting that stuff to people gets the greatest reactions. I totally forgot my cable bill last month. Paid everything else, was happy I had a surplus of cash (which I didn't, since the cable bill was overdue) and muttered on the phone to the chick from the company: "I totally had the money, I'm just an ass, but now you have to wait till the 15th. I plead a cross between forgetful and obtuse..."

So, the chick working the billing division groans and goes, "Oh, I'm totally that way..." and launches into a long, revealing history of some of her personal billing gaffes. I got off the phone feeling great and that huge sense of community you get from sharing and reciprocating.

I should write more about my customer service moments. There have been good ones, but they've all slipped from memory. That happens when you don't write.

Like, clean up on aisle 24's going to be barely a spark in the mind in a few years.

...Then, what I thought was 3 pieces to carry up three flights of stairs turned out being 7. WB, who's Mr. Hardcore Cycling Man turned UberDad, got smoked since he's majorly cut back on his cardio this winter. I was winded too, but did okay. I'm still hurting a bit with the lungs from my mild cold, but my endurance kicks ass. We got it done. Done! Woohoo!

Anyhow. The meatball story probably doesn't deserve this many words, but I'm too tired to edit. You'll eat what you're given.

And I own a real, adult bed for the first time ever. HOLY FUCK. I just realized! I have NEVER, EVER owned a new bed! I grew up sleeping in a 200-year old spindle bed that was my mother's as a child and her mother's before her, with foamies for mattresses since it was a custom size... Shit, probably half the reason I have such lousy alignment sometimes. Then I slept on a mattress on the floor in the Yukon. A wrought-iron bed from the 1800s in my early and mid-20s.

And, since then, no offense to Dad, but this piece of shit of leftover bits of wood that he put together that has actually done a very good job for years, 8 of them, to be exact, since the wrought iron one had a bar snap during my move. Sigh. You know what, though? I've loved every bed I've ever had. They've been wicked cool and unique. Except Dad's homemade jobby, which I didn't love, and was tragically unique and not a bit cool. He, however, made it pretty damned sturdy, so it worked. A little too well, obviously, if it lasted eight years. They all squeaked. But I wear hearing aids, so. Handy in the city when it's sleepytime. The traffic's noisy? For you, sure.

So. My first official probably-level-everywhere, factory-made support with uniform thickness throughout, and, pray to god, squeak-free bed. You know, squeaking beds take a lot of the fun out of sex when you have a neighbour's bedroom is at the next wall, only seven feet away. But that's why god made floors, I hear. Not that I'd know of late. Geez.

Wow. A grown-up bed. And I'm not even 35. About time.