A Fit of Productivity

I was seized by one of those rare fits on Saturday. The sort of fit where you wake up at 9:00am on a weekend and just feel the need to be productive. I am subject to one of these fits approximately once every three years, so when it hits, I jump to it.

By noon, I had the entire house clean, including the horror that was the kitchen and my bedroom, which has lately taken on the look a fabled disaster scene, akin to the wreck of the Hesperus. By 12:30 I was on my way to our local neighborhood IKEA store to finally pick up the shelving unit that I've been saying I am going to buy for approximately 5 months now. Since I'm still using the wire rack shelves that I acquired (read: stole) from Jim approximately 4 years ago, it was high time to come into the 21st century.

Or actually, I was not so much 'on my way' at 12:30 as I was 'staring at the Truck of Malfunction and its mostly flat rear left tire.' Normally this would have sent me into a spiraling depression of a weekend of sitting on the couch eating Oreos and watching How I Met Your Mother on DVD, but I was taken by this fit and as such, kept moving forward.

I called my dad, who recommended trying some of that Fix-A-Flat stuff in a can to get the TOM as far as a tire store so they could assess the situation further. Luckily, I happened to have a can of that stuff on hand at all time. It is the TOM after all, I'm like a boy scout where it is concerned - Always Prepared (for the Worst Mechanical Difficulties Possible). I popped that sucker onto the tire and started the magical inflation process. It got about 30 seconds into the pumping process when the entire apparatus exploded.

Apparently always being prepared is a bad thing, as the ancientness of my Fix-a-Flat caused the little tube through which the foam flows to degrade enough to collapse into a million pieces under the slightest of pressure. Thus there I was, covered in tire foam, sitting in the middle of my parking lot with a still very flat tire. Now normally this level of setback would have sent me into a spiraling depression so deep that it would have been a solid week on the couch, upgraded to eating frosting straight from the can while watching Arrested Development on DVD. I was in a fit though, you'll remember, so I kept going.

I decided that enough of the stuff may have gotten into the tire and made a mad dash to the Target about 30 seconds from my house to get one of those portable air pump systems that will plug into your cigarette lighters. This worked like gangbusters - the tire not only inflated, but stayed that way. Obviously I lead some sort of blessed life in regards to the TOM - everything malfunctions, but it never stops running.

So about an hour after expected departure I got on the road and made it to IKEA without anyone dying or getting covered in exploding foam. Things were looking up. I spent many an hour staring at shelves in IKEA, completely bewildered, but eventually decided to go with these, which are the most monolithic shelves I have ever seen. The little picture doesn't properly convey their sheer size - think the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey and monkeys. Only with room to store books! The box they came in was approximately 10 feet long (not an exaggeration) and weighed 98 pounds (ditto). Getting that thing from the store -> the TOM -> the apartment all by myself will rank somewhere around #6 on my all-time awesome accomplishments list. I'm telling you, this fit was strong.

Once home, I managed to build the shelves with minimal amounts of issues (IKEA is easy, yo), although I did drop a chunk of wood on my right middle finger and pop a blood vessel, causing it to swell up to twice it's normal size. But it's already healed two days later, so it barely warrants mentioning.

I then completely rearranged my bedroom (in the process cleaning out my closet and throwing away an entire truck-full of clothes, boxes, broken chairs, and electronic equipment) into the sexiest configuration you can possibly imagine. It is wildly adult and yet functional. I would post pictures, but I don't want too many people throwing themselves at me, and I know you would all be tempted to do so if I unleashed all the awesomeness over the internet.

Trust me, though: Hot.

The reorganization process took the entire rest of the day before it was completed; the final piece (making the bed) occurred at 11:42pm, which means that I was basically being efficient and doing things for over 14 straight hours on a weekend. Unprecedented, is what I am saying.

And in response to this flurry of activity, I did absolutely nothing at all on Sunday and only left the house in order to find food for dinner. Thus, the balance is maintained.

Sometimes I love being functional. But I never want to overdo it, so I'll be slacking off for at least the rest of January, just to be safe.