Spirit Level

Sometimes I get the impression Krissa thinks I'm a little crazy.

Like last night, when we were discussing the best way to return some of Kate's things; left over from when she lived with Krissa for two months before I moved in. There's a big (big...big and heavy) box of crockery, and a tall bookcase which is so long it'll stick out the back of the truck. We know it'll stick out the back of the truck because it's exactly the same model of IKEA bookcase that we have just this weekend put up in our living room, and our new ones stuck out a good eight inches on the drive back from Long Island.

"We could put the box across like this and rest the bookcase on it at angle like this, or we could break down the box into smaller ones and pack them around the bookcase, or, or, or, we could put some of the smaller packages in the bookcase to weigh down one end and save space," I said, gesturing rapidly.

Krissa slowly half-rolled her head to the right and looked at me. It's moments like that which give me the impression that she's trying to figure out precisely how many sandwiches short of a picnic I really am. As though she needs to come at what I'm saying from an angle she doesn't need to use in the course of a normal conversation.

"The box is too big to go underneath the bookcase. It would just sit on top of it and slide out the back. I'm not sure we can repackage all of the stuff around the bookcase, and there's no way you could put crockery in there. The back of the bookcase is practically paper."

Which left me feeling a little deflated, as you can imagine, but she had a point. Or rather, three.
But those moments of slight embarrassment when my loved ones have the niggling feeling that my common sense gene has switched off are more than made up for by times like Saturday afternoon.

When we got back from our second trip to IKEA, I aligned our two new shelves with a bottle opener, a piece of string, and a CD-R jewel case.