The Boys’ Bed Debacle

Over the past few months, we’ve been enduring what I refer to as The Boys’ Bed Debacle. Normally, when I require a new piece of furniture, I go to a local furniture store, select a piece, and the piece arrives in my home in short order. This, in fact, has always been my experience, until The Boy’s Bed Debacle, which basically was birthed out of what I now know was my foolish decision to order furniture online.

To give you a bit of background, when we moved to our new house, we left most of our furniture at our old house, because we rent it out as a furnished rental. This means that a very fine full/twin bunk bed with trundle and matching dresser is sitting at the old house, while my boys have been sleeping on new but frameless mattresses at the new house. In the new house, we are a bit pressed for space, so we decided to order bed frames with storage underneath for clothing and bookcase headboards for storing their books, video games, and Legos. Our small island doesn’t have an overabundance of furniture stores, and quick research revealed the best (I thought) sources of inexpensive furniture were online, so after some deliberation, we ordered two beds that were allegedly in stock.

Except post-order, we were informed that they weren’t. And thus followed months of drama where every two or three weeks I spent an hour of my time trying to track down the beds’ whereabouts, only to be given a new bogus story about why the beds were not currently on my doorstep as promised and would be delayed another week or two. The killer, too, was that we researched the company we ordered from before we placed the order, and they were given high marks.

Clearly, I’m the girl from Kansas on this one, because I actually thought that meant something.

Anyway, after months of thinking the beds were “coming next week” only to find out each time that they weren’t coming after all, we finally canceled the order and reordered something else from a big box store. The boys, while initially frustrated with having to wait so long, ended up pleased when they realized the new beds we ordered were loft beds with additional storage and a pull-out desk. An email informed us that the beds would arrive in three separate cartons, requiring some assembly. This was all fine.

However, yesterday, the day the beds were scheduled to arrive at the store, I got an email in the morning stating that both Carton 2s have “been damaged in transit” and have “been returned to the distributor” so a “refund has been credited” to me. Cartons 1 and 3, however, have arrived.

Was I supposed to derive some sort of actual meaning from this email?

Unbelievable.

Because in my understanding, I am now the proud owner of two-thirds of two beds. There is no description of what was in Carton 2 and if in fact it is something one could live without. Apparently, I’m not meant to get an answer to that question until I open Cartons 1 and 3 and begin assembling the beds.

So, I spent a good part of the day trying not to get upset about this latest part of The Debacle, and trying not to imagine my sons sleeping on an angle on precariously placed boards, holding on to the top boards as if some gravitational force or black hole was pulling them down, down, down. Obviously, I needed to make a call about this, but my plate was full yesterday, so all I did was make pallid attempts at not stewing about it while carting the small people to various stops around the island, while in line at the bank and the post office, while paying bills, and so forth.

Then, as I sat at a stoplight yesterday afternoon, still of course reflecting on The Debacle, I turned to my right and saw this.

Okay, I didn’t literally see that exact azalea, because stopping my car to run out and take a picture at that spot would have held up a dozen people, and let’s just say that, bless their hearts, there are large numbers of what I’ll call non-Southerners on this island, most with places that they expect to get to in a timely manner and most who would not be shy about expressing their discontent should I decide to interfere with that objective. I feel that I can say this with reckless abandon as I am originally from other regions myself, and would respond in like kind were I a driver who had to wait for someone to take a picture of a flower.

The point is, I saw an azalea like this. And then, I noticed several more and realized how many of the flowering bushes around me were starting to bloom. And suddenly, I didn’t care so much about my beds with missing parts. I didn’t care that I was back to square one yet again with the boys’ beds, because the azaleas were blooming. The world around me was ablaze with fresh color.

I’m happy to report that that feeling lasted during the entire time I waited by that light, and continued as I proceeded through the first half of the intersection.

Then, I recalled the phone call I’d shortly be making, and suddenly I didn’t care so much about the azaleas anymore.

Truth in blogging, folks. Truth in blogging.