Saturday, October 09, 2004

Putting Together A Baby Bed—Part Two

Okay, This Is The End!

Well, here I am, only about 24 hours later and I finished it, rolled it out of my study, down the sidewalk, and onward to its destination. But this much remains true:

I Wish I’d Had A Damn Diagram!

Somewhere toward the frustrating end, I drew the only conclusion left to me about why it looked funny and why the side rails wouldn’t release and go up or down—the two metal pieces (with that release mechanism) that connect the headboard and footboard of the baby bed were backwards. One at a time, I removed them, flipped them over, and reaffixed the A end to the B end and the B end to the A end. One pair of tiny bolts at each of the four ends.

Skillful Fingers Would’ve Helped, Too

Sounds so easy, does it not? Not. After getting them loose and reversing those, all eight of the bolts declined to be quickly reattached. Each time I got them lined up, touched the bolt head with the screwdriver tip, the bolt would unalign itself with the threads in the bedposts. My fat stupid fingers would quiver, tremble, and lose their grip on the bolt. The bolt would twist, slide, slip out of my grasp, then tumble to the floor!

Aaagh!

My nerves were getting frazzled and every frazzle led to a further state of spazzlement. I dropped them like this 3 to 6 times each; rare was the bolt that I caught on its way to the floor. For that matter, only half of them could be located on the floor without extensive searching. I found getting on my hands and knees with a flashlight generally worked well, though I’m not sure that’s how this procedure is ideally supposed to work. Why are my fingers so worthless!

Anyway, this pretty much solved it. I got the side rails on and they work nicely now that the other stuff isn’t backwards. I put some shiny new wheels on the legs and then I rolled. This job is over and if I ever have to do it again, I shall indeed be bitter.

Cute Baby

Even if baby John is very happy with the setup, all he can do to express his approbation at present is drool, spit up, drink, and dirty himself. Well, he has started to "talk" sometimes, but we are still uncertain what language it is. Sometimes I find he sounds like a bird or a mouse, but that’s okay with me. He's cute enough to get away with it.
NO BABIES HAVE BEEN HARMED IN THE ASSEMBLY OF THIS BABY BED.

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