Earth to Dave! (E2D!)

The first step to getting help is admitting you have a PROBLEM.

Many years ago my wife gave me a gift that changed my life. It was a fine Christmas morning and there was ONE MORE gift to open. We had saved the “big gifts” for last. My wife was thrilled to receive her new vacuum cleaner (??–see “Holiday Gift Giving Guide, December 2006. Note to self: Do not ever, ever, ever ever ever give your wife an appliance—especially a CLEANING appliance—for Christmas. Gift card, Gift card, Gift card.)

Anyway, my wife presented me with a rather large box which I promptly tore into. Inside was something I had always hoped for and now….it was mine. I saw it and something inside me “snapped”.

It was a Sears Craftsman LEAF BLOWER.

This was no ordinary leaf blower. This baby was GAS POWERED, 36cc two-stroke leaf vacuum/blower (imagine Tim Taylor “man grunts” here.) I jumped up and down, clapping my hands like a trained seal and promptly threw the strap over my head to assume “blowing position”.

My wife put her arms out and puckered up, awaiting the rewards (?) for her diligent work at finding the PERFECT GIFT.

Instead, she was shocked to hear that (beautiful) two-stroke engine whirring away in the front yard. The rest, as they say, IS HISTORY.

Now, the house we lived in at the time did not have many trees in the yard. I soon found that IN ORDER TO HAVE LEAVES, YOU HAD TO HAVE TREES. I would later plant trees, so that I would have plenty of (pesky) leaves to blow, thus fulfiling my compulsive need to, well, you know…BLOW.

Undeterred, I soon found that the blower was useful for more than just blowing leaves. It could be used to blow the garage, which I found was dustier than underneath our bed.

It could also be used to dust the engine of the car, which I found was also in great need of, uh…well, being dusted of course!

Later I found that the blower could be used to blow spider webs off of the house’s eves.

I never got around to trying the vacuum. There was WAY too much blowing to be done.

Later, I found that there was also another use for the blower:

Here, Scooter is enjoying the newfound blower useage.

In no time at all, I found myself blowing, just to BLOW. Eventually, my blower simply gave up the biscuit. It could blow no longer. It had no more life to give and was, in fact, BEGGING me to put it out of it’s misery. I was more than happy to because it was time for…

A BETTER BLOWER.

See, I realized that my blowing was good, but it could definitely be better. I not only needed more volume, I needed more VELOCITY. I needed a bigger engine, larger blowing tube-thingy, and definitely one that could be mounted on my back for those, uh, you know–marathon blow sessions (where every leaf was put in it’s place, and the last particle of dust was removed from the air cleaner, and my son Scooter’s cheeks were blown completely over his ears.)

Thus came….THE BACKPACK BLOWER. This one came at my own expense. See, my wife knew that I had newfound “blower standards”. I would scoff at my neighbors trying to blow with their wimpy blowers as I drove by:

“HA! Look at that goober. He’s got an ELECTRICAL POWERED blower! He’ll be blowing for YEARS! hahahah. Keep blowing, Mister Girly-Man Blower Guy!! I laugh at your lame blowing!!! HAHAHA!”
(wife rolls her eyes.)

Anyway, I knew what I wanted and I just went out and GOT IT. I’m just that kind of guy.

The McClullough Backpack Blower fit the bill. It had more volume, a larger motor, and CFM’s that’d put a triple-7 airliner engine to shame. Yes, that baby will do just fine.

Plus, it was modeled after those backpack spacesuit rocket things that NASA experiemented with years ago. It had a “bendy throttle thingy” on your hand on one side, and the blower tube handle for your hand on the other. As I would blow, I could imagine I was taking off to go fly over the traffic to Walmart pick up bread and milk for my wife. But where would I put the bread? What about the milk? What if I dropped either on the way home and it landed in someone’s pool? Then it would get ruined and I’d have to go back and get more. Plus, where would I “park” the NASA backpack rocket thingy at Walmart? Would they let me take it inside? Would they just put a little smiley-face sticker on it so I could prove that I didn’t buy it there? I had so many questions!

But I digress. (I digress alot. You probably noticed that.)

The backpack blower sits idly in my garage…only occasionally. I use it for EVERYTHING. Some days I come home and see a leaf, yes A leaf, on my driveway. I could just walk down there and pick it up. Nope. I have to fire up the backpack (NASA) blower and BLOW IT. It’s, uh, much easier (?) that way. Plus, I save my back the strain of bending over to pick up the leaf. Instead, I strap a 50 pound unit on my back for the 20 minutes it takes to get that dang leaf to blow where iI WANT it to blow. The stupid thing keeps getting an air pocket (or some turbulence) and floats back down on the driveway. I blow it again and again, with the same results.

Eventually, I just give up and put the blower away, because my BACK HURTS.

As I have become a veteran blower, my back has taken a beating. I go to the chiropractor now. The first thing he asks is

“Have you been blowing—AGAIN?”

“Yep.”

“You need to hire a gardner.”

“What?! And give up blowing?! Are you crazy?!”

“You need help”.

After hearing that enough times, I think he’s probably right. So I’ve taken my first step towards healing this obsessive-compulsive behavior. I admit it now. I’m a compulsive BLOWER.

I’d talk about this more, but I just noticed there’s a leaf on my porch. I’ll be right back.

I have discovered a secret.

A map to a buried treasure? Nope.

The Colonel’s “secret recipe”? Nope.

Where all those lost single socks go? Nope.

The secret I have found is simply this: Furniture shopping can make a completely SANE person go mental.

I know what you’re thinking: “you, Dave….SANE? hahahahaha”. Yeah yeah laugh your head off. But I would submit that a, uh…”more NORMAL person” might just as easily go mental shopping for furniture.

Once we sold our furniture on Craigslist, I figured “heck, that was easy. Now my sweetie can just go buy some furniture and this whole carpet/paint/remodel/rewire/spend spend spend fiasco will be over!”

NOT.

For those of you unfamiliar with my story, I’d suggest you review my original Craigslist (on line classified) ad for the furniture we had to sell. (Click here). My wife came home from work and HATED the newly-installed carpet (!!) Well, the end result was that buying new carpet was just simply not an option. The conversation went something like this:

Wife: “Honey, this carpet is awful. It’s dreadful. It makes the house look dark! Like a 1970′s home!”

Me: “…but you….picked the color.”

Wife: “I KNOW I picked out the color, but…it looks….different installed.”

Me: “Yeah, like alot more EXPENSIVE now that it’s installed. Do you realize we’ll have to (Editor’s note: pay attention here, dear readers!) spend $2,500.00 to replace this carpet and make it match our furniture, paint, and everything else? That’s just OUT OF THE QUESTION! Now honey, there has to be another way to make you happy, my little hubcap….”.

Wife: “Yes. Another way. (Editor’s note: Dave did not notice the new glean in her eye, and the 200 watt light bulb that suddenly appeared over her head, glaring in his face, with a big ol’ “DING” sound….dumb dumb Dave!) Yes, there IS another way!”

Thus started our what I call the “Unanticipated Total Remodel Phase I”. This included new paint, new wool rug, moving the entertainment center (read: re-wiring the walls/baseboards YET AGAIN) and selling of the “old and out of date” (and yes, for you “FLORAL HATER”:) FLORAL furniture. Net income: $350 for the furniture. Expense: $500 for paint, supplies, speaker wire, etc. Net total: $150 out of pocket. I didn’t even see it coming. (Hello? Dave? Anyone home?) As I surveyed the (now empty) living room with the (freshly laid) wool rug with all of it’s “bright, new colors” and the (repainted) walls, I knew I was in DEEP DOO-DOO.

Then came what I call the “Unanticipated Total Remodel Phase II”. This is where hubby is GONNA PAY, and not only using his WALLET. This is where the “fun” really begins. My wife became a female “Martha Stewart Magellan”, in search of:
(Big drum sounds, big band, lots of fanfare!) THE PERFECT FURNITURE!!
(NOW imagine sounds of clarinets squeaking, violin strings breaking, and piano keys playing the wrong note, all “peetering out” to a dreadful….silence.)

See, this is a demonstration of the way God, in his infinite humor, intentionally wired men and women differently. If I was looking for furniture, here’s how it would go:

Dave (walking into ding ding ding! >>>shameless plug…well, maybe not…read on<<<< Rooms-to-Go) : Excuse me, ma’am, are you a sales lady at this fine establishment?”

Saleslady: “Why yes. Yes I am.”

Dave: “I need…a ROOM.”

Saleslady: “Okay…what KIND of room?”

Dave: “Well, a living room. Like….(looking around)…that one, there! (pointing to living room display located front-and-center in the showroom)”

Saleslady: “Well, that’s a fine choice. You get this 100% genuine artificial particle-board framed FLORAL couch, the matching love seat, these Chinese-made end and coffee tables with the screw-on legs, and these two very plain and ugly nondescript lamps for $699.00 BUT you make no payments, with no accruing interest until the year 2030!”

Dave: “I’ll take it”.

See? Isn’t that easy? I’d have it delivered the next day and sit down and enjoy my “new” living room situation on my “butt ugly” carpet. Can life get any better? Again, I submit that it CANNOT.

But alas, Dave’s fantasy ends here. Instead, I have been subjected to furniture-shopping HELL. You see, I have learned that one cannot simply go into a store and buy something off the show room floor! How totally YESTERDAY. No, we have to hunt, search, hunt some more, search some more, spend endless hours cruising the internet, until we find:

(Big drum sounds, big band, lots of fanfare!) THE PERFECT FURNITURE!!
(NOW AGAIN imagine sounds of clarinets squeaking, violin strings breaking, and piano keys playing the wrong note, all “peetering out” to a dreadful….silence.)

Once we “find” the perfect furniture, we then have to make contact with some salespeople in the Carolinas, “America’s Furniture Capital of the Known Universe”, I am told. I make contact with “Jay”, who I have to say is one very cool and knowledgeable furniture sales guy. I really like him. Too bad we’re going to drive him “mental” as well. Heck, we’ll go for that ride together…..

I am tasked with the job of simply “calling Jay” and asking him for prices on 538 different chairs, sofas, ottomans and combinations thereof. The first conversation went like this:

Dave: “Okay Jay, let me start with number 1. The Bernhardt “Crawford” couch, Item B3887″

Jay: “Okay, got it. Is that fabric or leather?”

Dave (Blank stare at the phone): “Uh, I don’t know. She didn’t say”.

Jay: “Okay, well, how about if I quote you a price using a “G Fabric” and a “Number 4″ leather?”

Dave (Blank stare at the phone): “A wha? G Fabric? What’s that?”

Jay: “Well, Dave, in order to ORDER furniture, I will need to know the grade of fabric in order to price this piece. Same with the leather. See, Bernhardt uses a scale from “B” through “M”. Their leather, however, goes from grade 1 through 5.”

Dave: “Uh, okay. Let’s do “G”. “G” stands for “Good”, and I like number 4, cuz that’s…a…number I like.”

Jay: “Okay, well I will work that price. What’s next?”

Dave: “The Lexington Tommy Bahama Maya Chair number 01-1743-11-01″

Jay: “Fabric or leather?”

Dave: “Uh, okay. Let’s do “G”. “G” stands for “Good”, and I like number 4, cuz that’s…a…number I like.”

Jay: “Well, actually Dave, Lexington uses a “9 to 17″ scale for fabric and a “M through T” scale for leather. What would you like?”

Dave: (Blank Stare into phone).

So it went. E-mail and phone call after e-mail and phone call. Piece after piece after piece. I now envision a full-headed “Jay” now doing the “comb-over thing” trying to cover the baldness resulting from our making him pull his own hair out.

I’ve now realized that ordering a new couch and two (no, THREE, I am told) chairs will EASILY run me over $4,000.00 including shipping.

$150 out of pocket + $4,000.00 soon-to-be out of pocket = Dave is an idiot for not buying new carpet. Dang, she IS GOOD.

Tomorrow, I get to accompany my (lovely and deserving) wife to a furniture store. We get to play:

“I am going to pretend to buy furniture from you but in reality we just want to see your fabric samples so that we can buy your really overpriced furniture from that “much more REASONABLE place” in the Carolinas” game.

The salespeople will hover over our shoulder, wondering why we’re madly writing numbers down, all the while they are playing the “Those scumbags are pretending to be interested in our furniture but in reality they are just trying to get information from us so that they can go to the Carolinas and buy the same furniture for cheaper!” game.

The gamesmanship will continue. I’ll be asked questions like:

Wife: “Honey, do you like SOLID colors or something with a pattern?”

Dave: “Uh….” (more blank stares)

Wife: “If we do two chairs in leather, I think we need to have the couch totally leather-free, wouldn’t you agree?”

Dave: “Hungry. Me hungry.”

Wife: “Yeah, good point. We don’t want to have fabric that’s easily stained from food spills. I’m leaning more toward a polyester blend. Maybe something with some silk. No, silk is expensive to clean. I wonder what Laura has on that couch of hers? It still looks so new. Have you sat on that couch? Do you like hard cushions, or maybe softer ones? Pillow loose-back couches or couches with cushions?”

Dave: “mommy?” (curling up in fetal position).

Yes, that’s it. I’m on the verge of going….MENTAL.

Hopefully, she’ll buy something SOFT, like the padded walls in my “new room”.

Happy Shopping honey. You’re still worth it.