7.28.2005
Depot Dykes
I've learned a valuable lesson tonight: If it's too small to pay for delivery, and too large to fit in your car, you probably shouldn't buy it. If you insist on buying it anyway, ask for help.
We went to Home Depot tonight to buy a new fridge. While we were there we also bought:
- matchstick blinds for our sunroom
- paint and primer for the basement
- smoke detectors for all the bedrooms (our house currently has no detectors at all, it's amazing we're still alive to tell about it)
- One 36 inch wide screen door.
We have. It's just those larger things were also flexible. They were not rigid pieces of aluminum and glass.
There was a brief moment when the guy helping us out (you get help fast when you're with a woman who looks like she's going to give birth in the hardware isle) was trying to jam that door into the car when I had a vision of Kristin driving the car home slowly, on back streets, with me running behind holdng the door up off the ground. I was just starting to really get into this fantasy, imagining all the wacky adventures we would have on our Odyssey across the valley, when that sweet young man said the magical words: "Why don't I go get you some twine and a red flag and I'll tie this door to the car for you." And amazingly, he managed to tie that door up even though there was barely 2 feet of it actually in our trunk. I was able to drive the car instead of run along behind it.
So we got the door home. Not that we needed it tonight, or even tomorrow. If Kristin thinks I'm going to get around to installing that door before we could have talked one of our I'm-so-butch-and-I've-got-the-biggest-truck-to-prove-it friends to go pick it up for us, she's forgotten who she's married to.
Of course, we did get a kick out of the looks on all the people's faces as we drove around town finishing our errands with a screen-door hanging 3 feet out the back of our car...
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Why don't I go get you some twine and a red flag....
It's weird, I read those words, and it was an ephiphany. It was the answer to every single problem vexing my life these days, as well as the answer to some deep philosophical conundrums, and the secret to removing a raspberry jam stain from a white silk blouse.
Thank you, thank you.
Sometimes, like opening a particularly good fortune cookie, you find the advise you need in the oddest places.
p.s. I too, have had the smallish car with a big trunk vs. the unyeilding impulse purchase battle. The idea of you running behind the car, holding things in, fills me with glee.
The same thing happened to us recently at The Home Depot. We bought the materials to put up 150 feet worth of chain link fence in our yard. I was waiting outside with three of the big flat-bed carts (you know the ones) full of material while my partner rented a Home Depot pick-up. I was asked several times if I planned to haul all of my purchase in our Honda CR-V. I didn't tell anyone that my origianl intent was to do just that!