Some brain required...

... and I was running low on brains yesterday. It should have been simple enough to assemble the new chair and ottoman I bought at Ikea yesterday. (It's purty, ain't it? And comfy.) Heck, there were only four steps. Only six pieces. Only 10 screws. But somehow it didn't turn out that way. I ended up muttering and cursing to myself, ready to strangle the cat if she jumped in the box one more time.

Now, in my defense, it had been a long day. I took Boy to school to pick up his schedule. This required turning in his emergency info, getting his school ID photo taken, paying a deposit for his books, getting his schedule, turning in his internet permission form, paying for his yearbook, paying for school lunch, and picking up his books. (All 15 pounds of them. And notice how much "paying" was involved?) Since he missed orientation, we also walked around the school: finding his locker and making sure the lock worked, locating all his classes, timing how long it took to get from one building to another because he has classes in two buildings. Then we did some school supply shopping, took in a funny movie (thank goodness), grabbed lunch, picked out the chair at IKEA, got his free ice cream, and finally made it home around 3:30.

Not so bad, right? But then I started assembling the ottoman and discovered that the finish I had picked out didn't match the table I already had. I could live with it (eww), or I could go back and exchange the chairs ... and I might as well get it over. So I carefully disassembled the ottoman, tried five times before getting it to fit back in the box, taped it back up, and headed back to Ikea. I sat in the return line for 15 minutes, then got the chair with the right finish. I headed home, realized I needed food for dinner, so I stopped to go shopping. Then I realized I forgot to pick up the dry cleaning, but I had to go home to get the receipt.

I get home, put away the groceries, and by now it's after five. There was still half an hour before I had to run out for another errand, so I tried to start assembling the new chair, and couldn't figure out step one. There are two short screws, two washers, and two thingees I can't name that hold screws. But the picture doesn't show the washers in the first step, and I don't see where they go in steps 1-4, and all the other screws are in groups of four. What the ??? I look at helpful instructions, which show this:

Of course, they don't show any phone numbers for me to call. I don't feel like searching for the number, so I stomp around and grumble, stare at the instructions again, and generally feel like this:
Finally, I did what the picture said, and discovered the two extraneous washers actually appeared in step four, in such small pictures I didn't see them before. I got the chair assembled, the dry cleaning fetched, the errands run, and the dinner made. Then I collapsed in my new chair.

But I didn't get the blog updated. Or the latest chapter. I get enough frustration out of writing and the search for publishing that I didn't need any more for that day. Today will be better; a couple hours cuddling kittens at the Humane Society and all the frustration is gone, leaving me ready to write.