o chair

I found B. yesterday afternoon among the eccentric and eclectic furnishings of the local Pier 1 Imports outlet, sitting in a green velvet armchair. "This is the one I want to buy," she said. She'd phoned me at home and asked me to come over.

Besides a couch, we have one usable sitting chair in the living room, mostly used by B, who needs the support. (I sometimes use it, but mostly sit on the couch.) The current occupant was an adjustable-height swivel chair which of late had been deciding that it preferred to sit at the lowest height setting. This usually happens with adjustable-height chairs eventually, so we thought: why not buy an unadjustable chair that's the right height to begin with?

I was there to try it out and see if it was comfortable for my height also (it was) and a hatchback car capable of carrying the chair home in.

An employee confirmed they had one in stock, and then we waited in line to make the purchase. A lot of people buying chairs today, they noted. I began to muse. Faith hope and chairity? Sonny and Chair? Chair and chair alike? Ma chairie? Nothing seemed appropriate.

Eventually I pulled my car to the loading dock in the alleyway behind the store and took possession of a very large cardboard box (which eventually found its resting place on a quick trip to the city recycling lot, it being too large to be conveniently cut up for our own recycling bin). Inside was an identical chair, except that the legs had to be attached.

I'm used to furniture legs that just screw into place. This involved multiple bolts and washers, and an Allen wrench (included) that had to be awkwardly manipulated around the cloth bottom of the chair. I got the legs installed after much grisly wrenching, only to discover that, though this looked like the right way to install the junction between legs and chair, the back legs were in backwards, curling in instead of splaying out. B. thought, because of the placement of the installed washers, this was still the right way and the legs' placement in the slots just had to be adjusted slightly. I thought they had to be turned around entirely, despite the absence of washers on the other side. I phoned the company's help line, but after half an hour of being automatically told every ten minutes that I had less than five minutes to wait, I gave up and just did it the way I thought it should go.

We now seem to have a comfy chair which B. used happily today.