Last night was one of those rare nights that makes you believe sitcom
scripts are actually written by human beings and not mindless drones in
a hothouse, or smoking monkeys toiling over old typewrites. Jennifer
and I put together the baby’s crib. (Cue dramatic music).
To be fair, we did this once before last weekend, but it turns out that
JC Penney had given us this crib, when we had ordered this crib.
It was a real pain. JC Penney wouldn’t take the crib back without the
cardholder, my Dad, who had bought the crib for us a gift. He and my
brother Thad had to trek from Newnan to Smyrna (about an hour) and help
us get the crib back.
So now, 5 days later, JC Penney calls their house to let them know the
new crib is in. Great. Thad calls us and we finish our Papa John’s (the
new CinnaPie is terrible, btw) and head to Penney’s. When we get home
it’s almost 9:00 p.m. and Jenn says “let’s put it together.” Well,
there were 6 pieces and only 8 screws, how hard could it be? Hard. Very
hard. Extremely hard. Next to impossible.
Despite being designed for newborns, the fabrication of the screws and
the writing of the instructions was literally done by dyslexic migrant
workers. I’ve read more informative and compelling copy on the side of
a cereal box and the screws had to be coaxed quite a bit to fit in
their respective locking nuts. One connection in particular lasted 90
minutes, one episode of hysterics, two attempts by Lucy to go outside,
two “re-starts” and one liberal application of vegetable oil.
Once we got past that minor annoyance, the rest of the crib went up in
5 minutes. Of course, by this point it was midnight and we’d already
missed Emeril Live. At least we got caught up with Alton Brown and Good Eats.

My revised New Year’s resolutions now include a moratorium on the assembly of baby furniture.