Alternate titles of blog post?  “I am a rock, I am an island” or “F*^k you, Target!”

After this horrific breakup, I have been trying to make over my life a little – which includes some upgrades to my house.  I am feeling the need for change and the need to improve and it is cathartic to paint and decorate.  The downside of that is that I’ve been spending a lot of money (therapeutically…don’t judge), so instead of buying the nightstand that goes with my bed for $600, I bought one from Target.com for $100.  It’s actually pretty nice, but little did I know it would arrive in 400 pieces.

I certainly didn’t expect it to be fully assembled, but maybe I was crazy enough to think that it would be accompanied with directions that MAKE SENSE.  I know, I’m nuts.  There aren’t even words in the instructions, just pictures, and as I’ve mentioned before – spatial relationships, not really my “thing”.  So, I am psyching myself out that any damn fool can do this, I’m a grown woman who has been self-sufficient for longer than I want to admit, and I pour a glass of wine, throw in a Raiders of the Lost Ark DVD for awesome background noise, and get to work.

I got all the way to “Step 4” before my entire life fell apart (only a slight exaggeration).  Somehow being unable to put together a stupid nightstand threw me into a huge spiral of “Why in the HELL am I alone and lonely and twenty pounds overweight and no one is EVER going to love me?”  Yeah, perhaps a mild overreaction to not having an electric screwdriver, but whatever.  Even Indy couldn’t cheer me up, and after a somewhat satisfying temper tantrum, I piled up the remaining 379 parts and put them in a corner, where they will probably stay until I find a new boyfriend.

Just kidding of course, I have no plans to alter my revised life goal of dying alone, so I brought the instructions to work, where you cannot swing a dead cat without hitting an engineer.  Even they were stumped, so screw you, Target, it’s not just me.  In relating this ridiculously over-dramatic tale to a few friends in the last day they all had the same thing to say.  I’ll come over and help, when are you free?  Now, this may sound nice, but I really don’t need any “solvers” in my life when I’m in the middle of a illogical tantrum, so I told them all no in order to feel sorry for myself without encumbrances.  I will not be swayed by logic, don’t even try.  So what if the ex was basically useless around the house anyway, and we probably would have still piled it up in the corner and finished off the bottle of wine while watching the movie?  It is somehow less pathetic.

So, this nightstand is now my white whale.  I will put it together, by myself, if it takes me a month and I have to use duct tape and I can’t actually put anything in the drawers because they will collapse.  It will happen, no matter how hideous and non-functional it turns out to be.

Don’t be sorry for what you are thinking, sometimes I make myself tired too.