Saturday, a trip to IKEA. Sunday, a brunch not eaten.

 

Saturday would be a day spent presenting as Marian.  But first, RQS decided to help organize the clutter which was my kitchen.  So, for half the day, I didn't bother doing much.  But at 4 pm, we ended up driving to IKEA to look for a rolling cart.  $143.00 later, I had the cart and other needed items coming home in my car with us.  Both of us knew NOT to work on any IKEA assembly (including simple ones) until after we had a chance to sleep and get some more rest.

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Sunday would be a day spent as Mario.  We had negotiated noon as a mutual time for brunch, as RQS's friend insisted that we meet no later than noon because her grandchild would need her 1 pm nap.  I was a little miffed, as I knew that the friend didn't want to bend or accommodate our needs.  But, since this friend was down from Boston, I said OK to having lunch at noon, missing church for the nth Sunday in a row. !0 minutes before we were to arrive at the diner, the friend called asking us if we could meet at 1:30 pm.  Both of us were annoyed.  We altered our plans for the friend, and now she wanted to change things.  Both of us were peeved.  Her friend didn't care what she was doing to our schedules.  Only her schedule was important.  So RQS said we'll have to get together another time, and we proceeded to have lunch on our own.

What to do next?  Well, we hung out until 5 pm, assembling the rolling cart we bought the day before, then drove to BJ's to pick up a rotisserie chicken for dinner, and then went back home to eat.  For the most part, it was an OK day.  But one that could have been much better if we had been able to keep our original plans for the day.

Now that I have my chest, it's time for a nightstand.

 

Having taking the better part of 8 hours to assemble a chest, you'd think I was b--s--t crazy to order a nightstand and go through this again.  However, I want something big enough to hold a lamp, my CPAP machine, and CPAP equipment cleaner.  This means that I will again go the DIY route, so that I can have something that goes along with the furniture in my bedroom.

Putting this nightstand next to my bed will force me to retire some of the furniture I inherited from my late wife.  Unlike the chest I threw away last weekend, the nightstand I currently use is solid - as it was made by my late wife's dad.  Too bad that I can't ask someone to refinish two chests I own, as I hate the idea of retiring solid furniture.

One of these days, I plan to get rid of a 30+ year old computer desk, as it no longer serves my needs.  Will I go cheap and buy something from Ikea?  Or, will I buy something solid and pay the price for it?  Either way, I have time to think.

- - - - - -

The way I see things, I'm getting back to what I started 15 years ago - refurnishing my apartment in a style that pleases me.  None of my relatives would be interested in any of the furniture I own, so why buy anything that would be considered an heirloom?  I already have the emotional problem of disposing of 80+ year old china, as well as some crystal cut glassware that is older than that.

Given that I'm getting close to 70, I don't think that anything of heirloom quality makes sense for me to own.  My niece lives in a small flat in London, and my nephew lives in a small flat in Seattle.  Neither would have any use for the furniture in my place.  Yet, if they want it in a few years, they can have it.

Right now, I'm getting ready to sell my vinyl collection.  I'll be lucky if I get $1.00/album.  But it will mean that I have more space in my storage compartment that I can use to keep the things I want to keep around.Once this is done, I can think of getting rid of my entertainment center and have more room in my apartment.  The way things are, the more space I can free up in my place, the more I can do with the things I have left in it.

And now to assemble the darned thing....

 

Today's story starts with what happened overnight.  RQS and I got to sleep late last night, and this would be a minor problem.  Delivery was scheduled for some time between 8 am and noon, and I wanted to be sure to be ready for it.  

Sometime in the middle of night, I had to get up for a bio-break.  Somehow, I wasn't as sure on my feet as I should have been, and tripped in an interesting way.  First, I started falling towards the far end of the bed, and then rebounding to the right until I was stopped by a bedroom chest.   It was if I were drunk, and stumbled across the room.  RQS was worried that I might have hurt myself (I did - a minor bruise on my ankle), and helped me get back on my feet.

After my bio-break, I was back in bed for a couple of hours, then got dressed to await my delivery.  My ankle was hurting a little, and I knew that I couldn't lift the two boxes from the entry to my building to my apartment on my own.  Luckily, the delivery men came at 10 am, and brought the two boxes into the apartment for me to assemble.  And then, it was time for me to go back to sleep - until 2 pm.

 

I started work on the chest sometime after 4 pm, and it was slow going.  Ikea's instructions are written without words.  They only use diagrams to instruct the assembler what pieces to use for each step of the process.  And this can be confusing, as not all of their illustrations are clear enough to use without test fitting the pieces together.  I don't know if this is a deliberate part of the design process.  But I feel that someone with more experience assembling Ikea furniture could have done this faster than I could.  In fact, It wasn't until a little bit after 7 pm that I got the body of the chest put together.  

Shortly after this, we took a break for dinner.Then I started up again around 8:30 pm, finishing around 10 pm.  It was a long time taken to assemble the dresser, and I hope it does the job I want it to do for as long as I need it done.  Is the chest perfect?  No!  I can't open it as fully as I could the old chest, for safety reasons.  But it will hold much of the intimates in my female wardrobe, and that's what's important to me now.

PS: Tomorrow, I'll move the old chest to the trash area and move the new one to the now vacant space.

Now that the holidays are over, I can catch up on my posts.

 

RQS usually comes to my place on Friday afternoons and goes back home on Mondays.  If I go to her place, I'll usually arrive on a Friday, and leave on a Sunday or Monday depending on which side of the street I was able to park.  This holiday season is different.  RQS came up on a Friday, and will not leave here (with one exception) until after holiday season ends.  So I'll be catching up with occasional posts which describe what happened....

- - - - - -

The weekend before Christmas followed our usual pattern.  RQS arrived on Friday, and we ended up going out to a Chinese restaurant in Mohegan Lake.  (It was a choice between having Mexican for the 3rd time that week, or having something different.  Different won out.)  Once we were finished with dinner, we drove home for the evening.

Saturday came, and we ended up taking care of a couple of errands before driving to Ikea.  I wanted to replace a chest of drawers which is gradually falling apart with a cheap, but tolerably solid unit.  This would allow me to port clothing from one chest to the new chest, allowing RQS to be able to store more of her clothes at my place.  This would make it easier for her to stay for longer periods of time, when she has nothing much to do at her place.

Why did we go on Saturday, and not Sunday?  Bergen county, New Jersey has "Blue Laws" which limit the types of business which can be conducted on Sundays.  Furniture sales is not one of the permitted business activities.  So, we had to make it to Ikea on Saturday.  Otherwise, we would have to wait until after Christmas to check out the chest.  Once there, we wandered through the store until we found the chest in which I was interested.  RQS mentioned that I wasn't sure of the chest's dimensions, and convinced me that I should wait until I was sure of the measurements of the chest.  (I had previously measured the chest, but lost my confidence in my measurements, given that I had done this over a month ago.)  So, we browsed the store and bought a couple of things before leaving.  Just before we checked out our goods, we looked at the packaging for the unassembled chest - each of the two boxes weighed more than I wanted to lift into the car.  This meant that I would order the chest, and let someone else deliver the packages to my apartment.

Although we talked about stopping by Lane Bryant while in the neighborhood, holiday shopping traffic in Paramus scuttled this plan, and we went home for the night....

The search for the missing set of keys

 

Unlike most men, most women carry their essentials (e.g. Wallet, Keys, Tissues, etc.) in a handbag.  When going out as a female, I do what other women do - use a handbag.  I have humorously described a handbag as being like a black hole: It has infinite capacity, and useful things can only be extracted from its "event horizon." Once deep enough into the bag, it's hard to find anything anymore.  This weekend, I learned how deep a handbag could get.

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On Friday, RQS and I decided to spend the afternoon driving out to Paramus, NJ again, so that she could pick up a miniature roasting pan like the one I have, that she could use in her toaster oven. Since this was a day I would be presenting as a female because of a planned stop at Lane Bryant, I got shaved, showered and dressed.  Then out the door we went.  It was a smooth drive until we crossed the river into Rockland county, where we hit the expected traffic jam just West of the bridge. But soon afterwards, it was smooth sailing to Home Goods, and then to Ikea.  After buying the pan, it was off to Lane Bryant where I looked at a few blazers that were slightly too small for me, while RQS looked at a couple of dresses.

Soon, it was a short drive home, where the next day's "fun" was to begin.  On the way home, we stopped off at Trader Joe's to pick up some food and loaded 3 bags into the car.  When we got home, I opened the door, put the keys into my bag, then loaded the refrigerator with what I brought inside.

- - - - - -

Saturday came, and we didn't start getting ready to go outside until early afternoon.  After getting ready to go out to RQS's friend's exhibit at a Yonkers art gallery, I noticed something was missing - my keys!  There was no way I could go anywhere without them.  It was a mad search for keys, and all I could find were Mario's set of keys on my desk.  So I knew to be extra careful with this set while out for the day.

We arrived at the art gallery and chatted with RQS's friend.  I was introduced as Marian, and RQS caught up on old times.  Then it was time to go home.  Once home, we tore apart the place and found nothing.  The keys found a good place to hide from us, and they weren't coming out without a fight. After a 2-3 hour search, we gave up, and I resigned myself to paying a locksmith to cut a new set of keys, and to programming the car key - at a cost of $250 or so.  Ouch!

- - - - - -

The clocks changed, but I couldn't get to sleep until 4 am or so.  Sunday morning arrived, and I only had 4 hours of sleep - for 2 days in a row.  But this time, I had an idea.  My bag has front and back zippers.  The front zipper opens a small section of the bag where a woman can put her lipstick, etc. to be accessed easily.  The back zipper opens a section of the bag (along with a bottom zipper) which can be used to attach the bag to a luggage handle for travel.  I've misplaced my keys in that pseudo-compartment before.  So I'd check this area again when I got up.  Lo and behold, the keys were there.  What a relief.  What a way to start the day!

This was the first weekend in a while that I spent fully as Marian

 

This weekend, RQS came up to my place, knowing that I'd be in Marian mode all weekend.  I was having lunch with a friend from the imaging/indexing firm I once worked with, and then would be spending Sunday evening with friends from my game night group to enjoy some comedy.  If I had still been with XGFJ, this would have been impossible. But I am with RQS, and am very grateful to be sharing much of my life with her....

- - - - - -

When I woke up on Friday, I knew that I had a 12:30 lunch appointment with my friend (noted in a prior post).  Since I didn't want to change back into Mario for the evening, I let RQS know who to expect at the train station.  She arrived on the 5:00 train, and we proceeded to Trader Joe's to do some shopping before going home for the evening.

Saturday came, and we started off the day very slowly. But we had a goal - stopping off at Home Goods and then Ikea in Paramus.  So we got on the road by 4:00, and took Jersey side roads to reach Route 17 North of the store.  Arriving at the store, RQS went a little nuts (an over exaggeration) buying things for her place, while I bought a small handful of things I know I'll be using in the near future - such as a 3 prong blind cleaner that I picked up for under $4.00.  Then, it was off to Ikea, where I found a small "baking" (?) pan I could use in my toaster oven.  I spent more in gas and tolls than I did at the 2 stores. It was a good excuse to get out of the house, and allowed the 2 of us to do something we don't get the chance to do at her place.

But Sunday was the big day of the weekend.  We were meeting friends from the Yonkers Game Night Group to go to dinner and watch some comedy.  Although the comedians weren't that great, we enjoyed a nice night out with friends who know me as Trans, but treat me as a "normal" person.  I think they are glad that RQS is in my life, and I hope that she can be with me occasionally on one of our bi-monthly game nights.

Ikea

 

In one sense, if you visit one Ikea store, you've visited them all.  There is a winding path through the furniture showrooms, and it's all geared to lead you to an area geared for impulse buys before picking out the unassembled furniture (in boxes) from the warehouse side of the store.  

But first....

Last night, I sat down on a plastic chair that RQS had placed in front of her desktop computer.  Sooner or later, the chair was going to break under my weight (it was a flimsy piece of molded plastic), and it did in a spectacular fashion.  As I moved to get up from the seat, my shifting weight caused the rear legs of the chair to collapse and break off, causing me to land on the floor in an embarrassing way. At that point, RQS came over to help me up and I knew that we'd have to replace the chair today.

Morning came, and RQS had to go to her gym for her weekly round with her personal trainer.  When I picked her up, I knew the perfect place for us to go to get the replacement chair - Ikea.  So, it was off to Hicksville, and to do some chair shopping.  RQS was surprised to see how big the store was, and got some ideas of what she could do in her place.  After trying out a couple of chairs, we settled on one model - and purchased it.  And then we went for dinner at a seafood joint I knew in Lindenhurst.

Once finished with dinner, it was back to RQS's place to assemble the chair.  Assembly of most Ikea furniture is relatively straight forward.  One looks at pictures in sequence, and assembles the parts to look like the images on each page in sequence.  And that is what we did until RQS almost stripped the screw head because of a flaw in its manufacture.  To prevent damage to the remaining part of the hex screw head, I decided to use a pair of pliers to get the screw down as far as possible, then try to use the provided Allen wrench to tighten the screw the rest of the way.  Luckily, I was successful where RQS wasn't. Now, RQS has a solid chair she can sit on - at a very reasonable price.