You know how they say there’s no such thing as a free lunch? Same is true for Craigslist. Drew and I have been in desperate need of a new dresser for a loooooong time now and have been checking out Craigslist regularly for a used one. I got super-excited today when I found the the PERFECT dresser, almost new, solid wood, big enough for all of our clothes, and about 1/8 the price of a comparable new one. I got Drew onboard, we reserved our Zipcar truck, and headed out to NOVA to pick it up. And that’s when things started to suck. A lot.

So, naturally, the people selling the dresser live in one of those very tall, narrow townhouses where the front door is even a floor and a half above street level. And the dresser was on the top floor. As I already mentioned, this thing is SOLID wood. It weighs approximately 4,000 pounds. It does not come apart like IKEA furniture. To call it a dresser is really an understatement. It is more of an armoire with drawers on one side and a door with shelves on the other. It is as tall as I am.

So after wrangling the dresser down the first double flight of stairs (very narrow, sharp angles, low ceilings, loose carpeting), which easily took 20 minutes, we had to get it down to street level. Another double flight of stairs. Ug. We pretty much alternated smooshing me against the house and nearly losing the thing over the railing. Also, Drew was on the bottom and I suspect that if we had lost our grip from the top it would have flattened him like a pancake.

But things got really bad when we got back home and it was just the two of us to move it. By that point, we were so exhausted from carrying it down the stairs, we couldn’t even carry it on flat ground from the truck to the apartment. So we slid a blanket underneath the thing and dragged it in. We completely shredded the blanket, but the dresser is in the apartment (though not the bedroom, couldn’t handle that). Our backs hurt, our arms hurt, our legs hurt, our hands hurt. Was it worth it? I dunno:



BTW, Drew has requested to be the hero in this tale, and it’s true. He’s a big, strong, helpful husband and I take full responsibility for nearly killing us both with an extremely large, extremely heavy piece of furniture.

Sarah has taken off all the ornaments and lights off our dry little Christmas tree that now stands, forlorn, in a deep pile of fallen needles. The Sunday wash is 3/4 finished, and the coffee is almost gone.



This afternoon gives us a choice: go to the Corcoran to see the Ansel Adams and Annie Leibovitz photography shows, or go check out townhouses for sale in the neighborhood? There is an air of desperation on the local craigslist real estate pages. Who wouldn’t want to jump in to the market now?