Home: Some Assembly Required

It was bound to happen eventually, one supposes, though we have met other Americans who have said it’s never happened for them.

We’ve apparently now got friends*.

Oh, okay, fine. We’ve had lots of acquaintances, and they’ve been lovely, but though everyone is charming and friendly (except the people who are not), there is still an air of reserve with many of our acquaintances in this city, and though we know tons of people we’ve been invited to the homes of only a few. (T. takes this moment to point out that this is entirely okay, and she’s not angling for any invitations anywhere, ever – we’re just pointing out a cultural observation, as it were.)

So, it was a bit of a shock the other day to have a friend of D’s text that she was on our street, and wondering if he wanted to have a meal with her, and then to have her, upon finding that we’d already eaten, take him up on his polite invitation and agreeably wander to our back gate.

You can imagine T’s …well, full-out shrieking hysteria. She cleaned the bathroom and put out fresh towels and lit candles, and wondered if she had time to wash the volcano dust off anything but the windowsills. Bad that it was a former staff member at the university; worse that it was a woman whom she’d never met. Worse still was the fact that the wind had picked up, the volcano had gone off again and there was gritty black ash dust on every flat surface. There was much running around and eventually it was determined that there was nothing else to be done, so we sat down, and our guest arrived.

Good thing we’d just gotten a couch.

Okay, yes. We’ve been here in this flat a full year now, and spent a year with only the most basic of furniture. Friends of ours from Napa were “in the country” and dropped by and …sat in our office chairs, while we sat on pillows on the floor. Most of our friends and family in the 50+ category prefer not to sit on a hardwood floor, for some odd reason (and some much younger seem to have the same objection), so we’ve been thinking that perhaps we ought to do something about our theoretical guests’ level of comfort.

Plus, we’ve been told that our living room, what with the file cabinet and the desks, looks like an …office.

We declined to visit the Blue and Yellow Box of a Swedish Store Which Shall Not Be Named, and instead looked around to see what we could find locally. Futon couches and a reasonably priced kitchen table and chairs (*cough* Yes. We’ve been eating in the office chairs, too. We know: Uncultured Philistines.) were easily found; a little more searching and parting with a bit of cash turned up a great big wardrobe with drawers, for much needed bedroom storage. We found and ordered all of these fine things for delivery, only to have them arrive in bits and pieces. D. got out a few tools, and went to work.

That Swedish Store has had just too much of an influence on the world at large. EVERYTHING seems to be flat-packed nowadays. Many stores offer a builder to assemble these products in your home, but as this is money many people don’t want to spend, on top of having just bought furniture, they determine that they can do it themselves. And the person of average intelligence usually can. Granted, the instructions might as well be written in Sanskrit, but trial and error generally brings things to a decent conclusion. It just may take a few hours. Or, days.

We will draw a veil over the muttered imprecations, the weighty boxes, the lost hinge screws and the big fat blister in D’s palm, and instead leave you with the pleasant images of a room or two that finally look like part of a residence instead of an office suite, and a hope that your weekend is filled with all the friends you want (or all the solitude you crave), wherever you are.