Why must I be so damned stupid?

I'd like to think that because I gave up caffeine I am less aware in the mornings. But that may not be my real problem. My real problem is that I am distracted this morning. Or it could be that I am an idiot. Or both. Mostly the last one.

Ricardo is still out of town. He won't be back until Tuesday night. But the painter (remember sometime in November? Try January) is ready to do our room. He painted the bathroom on Friday and it looks great (except where there are 1 inch gaps at the top of the walls where we need to get crown moulding and put it up and get it painted). The new towels are here. We are ever closer to success.

But tomorrow he's painting our bedroom. And Ricardo's out of town. So I had to move it all around so he can get at everything. And this is where the being an idiot comes in.

I tend to pile shit up. I pile clothes on the end of the chair, the bed and in my closet over the rod. I pile bits and pieces on my dresser. I leave things around. I will admit that. But it had to all get picked up so I could move my dresser. I spent an hour going through all the shit on my dresser. Five bottles of perfume, four different lip balms, three glasses cases, two epi pens, one peak flow monitor and countless pairs of earrings later, I had the dresser cleared. But the question was what to do with it.

Darryl (the painter) needs three feet clearance to paint. And we have a small room. With a king sized bed. And two dressers. And a TV. And a chair piled with my shit. And fifty pairs of shoes. You get the idea. It's not capacious to say the least.

And I was on my own. How to solve the bedroom Sudoko? The TV is definitely too heavy to lift for me. That had to stay in place on its dresser. But my dresser, while tall and wide, was probably light enough for me to drag across the floor and out the door. I decided that that was the one that had to go. But it was on the far side of the room. I was going to have to move the other dresser, TV included first. It seemed the best way to go there was to just shove it up next to the bed and hope that there was enough room to push the other one out. There was. But then the snags hit.

First one was the rug. We got our rug free from Lowes after they royally screwed up our flooring order a few years ago. Since it was free, we figured the thing to do was get a really thick pad. Who knew that that decision would lead to my need to a heating pad today?

I managed to lift up the side of the dresser (I had thought to take the drawers out) and shove it onto the rug. Where it came to a standstill. So I shimmied back into the bedroom and shoved at it to push it further. I managed to get it all the way onto the rug except for the far side of it. There the feet jammed up against the doorway and would not budge. So here I was, trapped in the hall and unable to move the dresser.

This would be fine if I hadn't made the kid sweep all the dust while I moved the dresser. While I was trapped in the hallway, he was trapped in the bedroom. And singing away. With no knowledge of how screwed we both were. He was going to need to help. And I was going to need to haul as hard as I could. Because it was only 8:15 am and not really a fine time to call a rescuer. But I was already ticking through my mental rolladex for who I could call who would be nice enough to A. not laugh at me for a long time and B. come to my aid at 8:15 on Sunday morning. And I wasn't sure of who I knew who could be trusted to not laugh for a very long time.

So I began to yank. And the Kid began to push . Together we got the one leg up and onto the rug. But the other was a stubborn bastard. And by then I couldn't really grip it very well. The kid began to wonder aloud how he was going to get out of the room. This caused me to wonder when he was going to realize he was never getting out of my room. We rocked it and pulled and pushed and finally got it onto the rug where I managed to wedge it into the doorway of my study. Whew! All set.

But we weren't. Because last night we had some friends over, and because I tend to pile shit up, I had hastily had the Kid go ahead and toss the pile of coats into my study. And they were now blocked in by the dresser. I figured we'd be cold for a couple days. Fine.

But not fine. Because it also became clear that if I were to want to say, get dressed and I don't know, go to work tomorrow, I was likely to need things like underwear, socks, bras etc. And these could not be retrieved. Because they were quarantined by the dresser. And damned if the cleaning lady hadn't put all the clean laundry away on Thursday. Shit. Shit. Shit.

Back to the dresser from hell. I put all my weight against it and shoved. This had the effect of wedging it firmly against the elliptical trainer which stands majestically if unused in the center of my study. And which weighs nine hundred pounds. Now I was really screwed. I couldn't get at it well enough to make it turn the corner and cozy up to the closet doors. And I couldn't pull it back out for the same rug pad reasons that got it in there in the first place. But the Kid could squish in and volunteered to do so.

So I let him squinch past the dresser and the ironing board and while I steadied it, he was to push against the side to make it turn. But it got stuck on the area rug. For the second time this morning, I had irrevocably trapped my only son in a room with a dresser. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

You know those stories about women who lift cars off their trapped infants in a show of superhuman strength? I don't believe in that shit. Because try as I might I could not make that damned dresser turn the corner. I had a choice to make. Trap my son further and hope to squish in myself on the other side. Or call the rescue squad. Or Bruce who I was pretty sure would laugh at me but probably would take a break from hysterics to help and then resume the hilarity.

And now the parent of the year award? I trapped him further. But I managed to shove my fat ass around and get in (and get bruised, I can feel it). Once in, I managed to yank the dresser off the stuck rug (it may have torn, I'm not sure yet) and around the corner. Once again, my panties and I were reunited. The kid grabbed the coats, I grabbed my aching back and we got the hell out of that room.

And all I can say is the paint better be fucking gorgeous tomorrow. G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S.