The Red Couch: Moving a Monster
Husband and I rearranged our living room recently. Mostly because I had this wonderful urge to make things look cleaner in a really difficult way and also because I wanted to get rid of this hideous, sunburnt, orange-red, winged couch we've had in our apartment since we moved in. Our living room is not big. Like, it would be uncomfortable for more than two horses to be here for any period of time. But it had a ridiculous amount of furniture in it. Here is a picture for you:
All the orange walls are slanty because we live in an attic, meaning we cannot put tall furniture near or hang anything up on those walls.
We were mostly fine until my parents gave us the Lovesac for Christmas, and it totally threw off the balance of the place. It's marvelous, but tends to ooze outwards and absorb way more floor room than it deserves. I think it even eats other pieces of furniture.
So, to clean house, we got rid of the aforementioned sun-spotted, faded, used-to-be-red couch from the 70s.
But we were kind of sentimentally attached to it, and while that does not garner it a place in our house, that does garner it a retelling of the touching story that brought it crashing into our lives.
Part 1: We Find a Free Couch
Husband and I are driving through central Provo when we see a couch on the side of road with a sign on it like this:
Husband thinks it's a sign from the gods. Clearly, since we are moving to our first unfurnished apartment in about a week, we are morally obligated as poor, starving college students to take advantage of this manna from heaven.
We pull over and inspect. I knock a spider off, Husband declares it perfect, I throw my hands up, and we throw the cushions in the back of our little Chevy Malibu, clearly staking our claim and planning to return later for the couch.
But when we go back for the couch, we realize that there is no physically possible way to fit it in our car without taking up basically the entire road and most of the sidewalk.
It won't even start to fit in the trunk. One of us would have to run behind the car holding up the back end of the couch so it didn't drag on the road.
So we just leave it there, not sure of what to do.
Until a few days later when Husband, granted ultimately superior thinking by acute frustration at homework, comes into the kitchen in his running clothes and announces:
"I'm gonna go for a run and get the couch."
And then he's out the door before I have time to say, ".........umm, what?"
So I put on my running clothes (which takes me WAY longer than it took him because I have to wrestle with a stupid thing called a sports bra) and go out to find the couch. Not that I have a plan or anything, but really, would you at this point?
I run to the neighborhood where we found the couch, figuring that since it's giant and blood-orange-red and might possibly be moving now, it should be easy to spot from, like, 10 miles away.
After about 10 minutes of running, I find Husband and the couch like this:
So I sort of poke my head under the couch and stare at him for a minute and ask "Want some help?"
Because seriously what else can you say in this situation?! "This is a bad idea...What, are you crazy?...You'll throw out your back!" We've obviously moved well beyond the realms of rational logic.
So I figure we'll just get this over with as quick as we can.
I crawl under the couch with him (which I hope was actually helpful and not just unbalancing and annoying) and we slowly, shakily stagger toward home while I try not to do the fun word problem the situation has concocted for me:
1. If it takes Husband 10 minutes at a maniacal pace and you 20 minutes at a moderate pace to run from Point A to Point B, how long will it take both of you combined to return from Point B to Point A if there is a giant red cow sitting on your shoulders that demands a break and a short exhausting sprint at every single intersection. And also you're blindfolded.
Answer: I'd rather not even think about it.
After maybe 4 or 5 blocks, this wonderfully kind soul in a bigger-than-ours car stops and kind of looks at us and asks, "Going far?"
Husband says, "No" almost at the same time I say yes, and I nearly yell, "Dear, we've got 16 blocks left!"
Apparently my head was doing some math without letting me know. How considerate.
So we load this couch into this wonderful man's trunk, and it STILL has to be tied in because it's so freaking ginormous that it still won't fit all the way.
We get the couch home, I make Husband clean it off like the stray it is, and we celebrate having obtained our first piece of free married furniture.
Part 2: Moving the Free Couch
I bet you think the story's over because we got the couch, but that's only half the reason we became so attached to this couch.
A week after we get it, we have to move the couch to our new apartment, 1.3 miles away.
Husband proposes carrying the couch turtle-style all the way to the new apartment.
For reals. Like he hasn't learned A SINGLE THING from the first time.
A nice man with a pick-up truck helps us avoid the turtle-cow-carry method, but once we get the couch to the rat-maze entrance of our attic apartment, we realize we have another problem.
These are the approximate steps we need to accomplish to get the couch into the living room:
1: Up the first set of stairs Doable. 2: Around a sharp corner with a low roof 2 attempts and success! 3: Up the second set of stairs Manageable. And also gave us the idea for our zombie plan.* 4: Around a sharp corner/through the kitchen door with a low roof Because these obstacles must be overcome all at once, impossible. We tried a lot. Can't be done. Dang it. 5: Lift 3.5 feet in the air and carry it over a corner made by the oven and the counter top. I already said it's impossible. We can't even get this far. 6: Carry it down a very narrow, very slanty-ceilinged hallway. Stop listing impossible steps! It should have ended at 4 because that's as far as we got, sheesh!
So we end up sadly looking at our couch from our kitchen like this.
Which is just tragic, because so much effort has already been drained into this stupid couch, it practically holds a piece of our souls.
Shoulders stooped with failure, we thank pick-up man and leave the couch outside our apartment (so, you know, we can get in and out of our new home).
And the couch sits out on the asphalt next to our apartment in the sun for another three days or so.
Until I come home from school one day and Husband is sitting on the couch in our living room like it has lived there its whole terrible, way-too-long life.
I ask the obvious. "Um, how did the couch get into the apartment?"
"Oh, I got frustrated doing homework."
"...So you temporarily suspended the laws of physics or created a shrinkray or something?"
"No. Just brute strength. Apparently you missed the hole in the porch ceiling coming in."
I check, and there is indeed a new hole in our apartment that we decide not to fix because obviously the couch has to get OUT sometime in the future using the same hole.
Although I guess we could leave the couch behind when we move out and just pretend it came with the apartment and let the next unfortunate renter deal with it.
But I'd feel really guilty about that.
Part 3: Ditching the Free Couch
So last week we got rid of it. Well, Husband got rid of it. I didn't do nearly anything because I was pregnant. It involved a lot of grunting, some shuffling, a sledgehammer, splinters, and turtling it to the dumpster.
And now the hole in the ceiling is a little bit bigger, but nothing to be done about that.
And now our lovesac has all the ameoba room it needs and our living room can breathe again.
*The only downside is that we need a new zombie plan now. Our previous plan was to shove the couch back into the narrow staircase so zombies would find it extremely physically challenging to crawl over. And Husband has a sledgehammer he's always eager to use, not to mention his daggers, tomahawk, katana, and various other weapons. And we have enough food to survive for at least 6 months. Probably.
I suppose we could do the same thing with the Lovesac though, and it could just absorb all of the zombies.
I shall discuss this with Husband.