Vaulting Horses and Growing Pains

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I ache all over. My fingers are bruised and bloody, my brain hurts from trying to figure out what the nutty designers at IKEA had in mind when they designed the new office chair I bought…it took the inhuman strength of fractious (nearly tearful) frustration and yes, hint of rage, to finally get the damn armrests connected to the back! I barely had enough strength to drag my battered self up and collapse into the chair’s ergonomic softness….ahh, I can see myself bashing out my novel seated here! MMMmmm those IKEA guys are onto something…my mutinous bum ventures…only to be given a bloody finger (literally) by my bruised left hand (I was abit overzealous about ripping some packaging with a paring knife ). My knees are as sore as a penitent nun’s during Lent I tell ya! After finally finishing hammering the protective pads on the base of the desk, I righted the desk, suffered some more knee pain as I hooked up my computer (took time to clean the rather dusty monitor), banged my head on the bottom, crawled out all sneezy and dusty, leaned back to survey my handiwork, and two things struck me almost instantly:

- I’ll be damned if the desk is not as high as a gymnastics vaulting horse! Rather than the efficient, sleek, NORMAL SIZED specimen lately of the IKEA showroom, this was a monstrous, black hulk towering in a threatening manner over all other furniture in the room! I swear, you would need a stepping stool or such implement to even rest against or sit on the desk (not that I’ve ever had need to do this, but say I wanted to, I’d need a footstool first!!!)…it is almost at my waist when I stand beside it…you could fit a standing four yr old underneath it…you have to see it I tell you to understand…

- The bloody thing was facing the wrong direction! And no, it would not do at all…the midbeam was in the way. There was no other choice but to take off all the computer gadgetry on it, disconnect wires and power supplies, to rotate the desk (note that I have 600 sq ft total living area so room to rotate a 1.4m long desk is not guaranteed)!!! I swear, I now truly know why Jesus wept!

Ages later, I sit here typing, still sniffly from dusting the forgotten corners of my house, avoiding my next challenge in a box. Seriously, I miss the days of Kenyan carpenters who made-to-measure. We had a carpenter called Peter who was really good at what he did (except the year he drilled into the electric lines installing shelves, meaning we almost missed watching Miss Universe…and before you raise an eyebrow, in the days of KBC-only-Kenya, you watched what was on offer- you didn’t question). Peter wore these short sleeved sweaters which to this day we all call “Peter-sweaters” in our family (I guess that can’t ever be our safe-word, our in-the-event-of-kidnapping proof of life question huh?)…towards the end his work became abit erratic (like the shelves that list dangerously to one side in spite of various ingenious attempts to file down the base to flush by subsequent ‘Peters’)…but his good work lives on (like the triangular TV shelf that fits into a corner neatly).

Anyway, to calm myself, I raised the chair to its maximum height (I am seated at what looks like a leather throne before my personal vaulting horse as I write this), reached for the wine and chevra, and here I am!

Mary J. Blige’s new album ‘Growing Pains’ is out!!! I like most of it. Talk of a reward after a bad day. I am indifferent about the hit singles like ‘Work That’ and ‘Just Fine’, but the other interesting cuts have me intrigued…listening to “Come to Me” makes me think of MJB the closet-rocker…there’s something about it that’s just different yet familiar (It makes me think of ‘One’ with U2). ‘Smoke’ just fits the greyness of Winter weather (especially when you are on vacation and don’t have to be anywhere)…then there’s ‘Roses’ where she lets loose but in a nice way…when she sings “…welcome to this new definition of love, it ain’t all roses, flowers and posing, it ain’t all candy, this love stuff is demanding…”you totally get what she means. I also like ‘Stay Down’ because it’s about hanging in there when it comes to love ’cause you’ve made a commitment, and to remember the good especially when you’re in a bad patch. There are duets on this album and I kinda like ‘Shake Down’ with Usher though I’m not sure if it’s just ’cause of the last couple of seconds when they sorta kinda get free and riffy with the song (funnily I never feel like Usher has chemistry with the duet partners I’ve listened to him sing with…as in, musically it’s good, but you don’t feel ‘it’…remember ‘my boo’ with Alicia Keys? It didn’t feel electrified…just musically proficient to me). The standouts for me so far:

- Come to Me

- Smoke

- Roses

- Stay Down

OK, time to get off the throne to do something else, I’m getting altitude sickness from up here!!!!

Soundtrack: Growing Pains, Mary J. Blige

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