I will admit in 11+ years of marriage, I have learned to hand off the heavy lifting to Jimmy. Got a piece of furniture that needs to be moved? Before marriage, I would have shuffled it across the room by myself. After marriage, I would wait for Jimmy to help me if not watch him move it by himself.
I was a VERY self-sufficient girl before marriage and I'm having to grow my self-sufficiency legs back. I'll give you a couple examples, since I know you're a captive audience.
1. We have a queen-sized mattress on top of split boxsprings. Why might we have split boxsprings? Because we learned the hard way in Baltimore that a queen-sized boxspring does not turn corners to get up tight staircases. The problem with the split boxsprings is that our metal bedframe was missing that reinforcement leg in the middle that provides support from the floor up to the frame so we had some major sagging going on. Jimmy and I noticed before he left that we rolled into the middle, but it seemed easier to roll than to fix the problem. Until yesterday, when I got fed up and called the mattress store, asked for the best solution and was told what to buy at Lowe's. Then I went to Lowe's and had them cut the wood into the right size slats. Then I came home and heaved the mattress off and lifted the boxsprings off and laid down my wooden slats. And guess what? Last night there was no rolling, no distinct sagging, no hanging on to the edge of the mattress.
2. My bedroom in this rental house looks like a warehouse. Oprah says your bedroom is supposed to be a retreat. My bedroom is a retreat only if you like communing in Sam's or Home Depot. I have a dresser, a bed, two mismatched bedside tables (that aren't really supposed to be bedside tables so they're entirely too large for the space), a file cabinet, industrial shelving (that I was using before the dresser got here from storage, but now realize that I need at least a couple of the shelves), and a closet door that won't close because I have hanging shoe racks on either side of the door. In other words, it's a mess. But today I decided that if I moved the dresser over some, I could put a couple of the shelves on that same wall, cover it with a table cloth to hide the junk on the shelves and it wouldn't be quite so heinous. The problem is that there's a 26-inch television (the big, fat, heavy "old" kind and not a sleek flat screen that my 6 year-old can pick up) on top of a 5-drawer dresser that's packed to the gills. The dresser is sort of tall and I was scared to risk lifting the tv for fear that I'd drop it or get it down and not be able to get it back off the floor. So I did what any sensible person would do. I tried to push the whole combination. And guess what happened? NADA. That's right. It didn't budge. So I walked away and gave it some thought. And decided to wait until somebody stronger could come over and help me. And then the self-sufficiency thing kicked in and I decided I was not going to be beaten by a heavy dresser. Women lift cars off of their children nearly everyday, for crying out loud. So I kicked off my flipflops, squatted a little bit, put some shoulder into it, and the whole thing moved. I was able to push it about 3 inches before it (and I) just refused to go more. It still needs to go a couple more inches, but I can live with it the way it is for the time being.
So there is a feeling of self-satisfied accomplishment for getting some things done around here, but what I wouldn't give to have Jimmy here to do these things for me. And this time, I wouldn't take his muscles for granted nearly as much...
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