Boxes on the Porch

Today is a very exciting day! Came home to find both the UPS guy AND the FedEx guy had visited my front porch. Two boxes to open, ohhh man I LOVE getting stuff from those guys.

First box. Ripped it open with a bottle opener. Pair of shoes! Yeahhh! That new pair of sandals I ordered. Pulled them right out of the box, slipped them on.......easy!



Next box. Bigger. Lots bigger.
It's my bike!!!! I ordered a bike a couple of weeks ago and it's here!!! I'm so excited I could spit. But this is a job for something a little more serious than a bottle opener. Nooooo problem! My craft scissors work nicely. The big staples holding the corners of the box together bend pretty easy and............

Oh.

Ok. Sooooo apparently you don't just rip open the box, slide out the bike and start riding it around the house. (Which yknow, is pretty much the way it works with shoes: open box, put on shoes, walk to mirror, admire feet, congratulate self on great choice....yada yada.)

Not so much with the bike.

Oh dear.

Sheesh. This is looking like some serious business and my happy face is starting to get sad.


Things always look better in the living room. I carry the various pieces in, prop them on the carpet and resolve to face disassembled scary bike like a big girl - with tools!!! I have some!!! How tough can this be..........there's gotta be a little instruction sheet here somewhere, I'm sure it's just a sliding A into B kinda thing. Five minutes and I'll be pedaling down the street. Now where is that instruction sheet.....................

Err...I mean, 64 page Bicycle Owners Manual and Assembly Instructions. This is the part where lesser women hiss and say "ohhhh sh*t!" Not me, baby. Nope. I march to the tool drawer and lay out my nice collection of tools.

I have a nice hammer, some pliers, five flat screwdrivers in a variety of colors and some pointy-pinchy things. And sometimes a big ol' knife and spatula come in handy, too.

Ok, let's tackle this baby and get out there on the bike trail.

The bike assembly instructions aren't bad. I think I can do it. But I'm up a creek, I have never HEARD of these tools. Spanner??? What the...or is that scanner.....put on my glasses. Nope, it's spanner. It says I have to use a 13mm spanner and I haven't a clue. And once I'm done with that, I'm supposed to use a 15mm open ended spanner.

Not to be outdone by a booklet of instructions printed in plain English, I take my study skills straight into the pages of the manual, highlight the unidentified tools and turn to my good friends at GOOGLE. What the freakin' heck is a spanner!!!???????

Huh??? Doesn't that have to be hooked to something like a handle or something? Crum. None of my screwdrivers look anything LIKE that thing.

Or this thing. So yeah. This is the part where I get sigh and say Ohhhhhhhhh sh*t.

And then, of course, I get a grip and do what I always do in situations like this.

I make toast.

What can I say, I'm a stress-eater. Some people pop a Zoloft, some people grab a beer. Me?

I make toast.

I don't know what I'm gonna do now. I feel just a little bit like I might cry.

I won't. But I kinda feel like it.

I'll figure it out.

Stay tuned.