Assembly Day

Yesterday was Assembly Day in Casa de Dullemond.

While one of the bassinets from the baby showers was assembled by my father in law for the party, the second was left to me. So I dutifully gathered my tools and went to work and after about an hour had it put together and ready for its charge.

Then I went to work preparing the car seats for deployment. That wasn't too hard, they just needed some adjustment and straightening of the pads.

Finally I went to work on the motorized swing which was more of a challenge and nearly took off one of my thumbs in the process. The metal bars all had little snaps that you had to press in to slide into another metal bar, and plastic cowling in the way of all that. I knew it was coming and knew it could not be avoided: sure enough, SNAP and the plastic dug right into my thumbnail. BUGGER! Fortunately, I survived.

At this point Kim was doing some vacuuming upstairs when suddenly I hear "OOPS!" and the vacuum run hard. She turns it off and declares "I sucked up a sock!" She takes off the attachment and peers down the tube. "Its not in there." Since there is still three feet of hose until it gets to the motor, it could be in there, or in the bag.

So Assembly Day becomes Disassembly Day. I can't get the hose off the motor at first so I try and work the other direction from inside (after making sure the sock is not in the dirt bag) but find to my frustration that the internal end is firmly attached to the external end. There is no two ways about it: that hose has to come off.

Out come the tools and the tool assistant. With Kim holding down the vacuum with her foot and pulling up on the hose with both hands, I worked a screwdriver into the slot to try and pry the hose off the the nozzle. Much cursing and grunting was heard. Then, POP! The hose came off.

There is the sock... and a pen? "Where did that come from?"And a tube of chapstick? "Oh yeah, I sucked that off the dresser by accident a while ago." Insert long suffering sigh here.

Anyway, we put the vacuum back together with a new dirt back and cleared hose. It should work better than ever now.