Day +62: The Day My Couch Went Away

Another remnant of my old life went away today. And I wasn't quite as sad as I was when I parted ways with my other belongings in the past.

I bade a fond farewell to my old couch today. I'd had my lovely brown suede couch for 5 years, and it had served me very well over the years. I'd spent many a night lying on this couch, watching TV and relaxing, and all too often, I'd fall asleep on the couch after watching too much TV and becoming too tired to make my way to my bed. Whilst it was a painful purchasing experience, the couch was fabulous.

Since moving to Denistone, it became apparent that it was too wide for the space we had, and that the frame was not as good as it use to be. The movers had to dismantle the couch to get it into the lift to move out of St Leonards, and after reassembling the couch for us, we discovered that parts of the couch was suffering from a bit of wear and tear. Jonathan and I tried our best to patch the frame, and whilst it stood up to the task of providing comforting seating for our family, it was time to move on and buy a new couch.

I received a call last Friday to inform me that the new couches was being delivered on Wednesday this week. Incredibly, the couches were going to be delivered to us 4 weeks after the date of purchase, when we were quoted 6-8 weeks, and it was coming on Wednesday. If I could have kissed the man on the phone, I would have. Thank you, Oz Design Furniture! You little ripper!

When we bought the new couches, Jonathan and I discussed what we should do with the old couch. I wanted the old couch to go to a good home, and as we were also giving away the fold up futon sofa, we asked Penny if she would like to have both of them. She thought long and hard about the gift, and took up our offer of the fold up futon sofa. It was just as well, as I wasn't too hopeful of her getting our old couch up those steep stairs to her apartment. I could have tried to sell our old couch, but that involved too much effort, so it was decided that we would donate the couch to charity.

I wanted to donate it to a Vinnies Centre, but the lady on the phone was not very nice. She sounded like she was talking down her nose to me, and basically told me that the pick up guys may not want to take the couch if they thought it wasn't worthy. Even after I told her that the couch was in perfect working order and that there wasn't a scratch or even signs of wear and tear on the fabric, she still insisted that the couch may not be good enough for them. And here I thought beggars couldn't be choosers. Not that I meant Vinnies Centres were beggars, nor the people who shopped there were either, but here I was, with every good intention of donating a fully functional couch to charity, and it felt like they were doing me a favour by taking the couch away. Sorry, Vinnies, but you won't be getting the couch.

I turned to the Salvos, and they took my details without hesitation. This morning, 2 blokes showed up at my front door, and they didn't even pause when they took the couch away. The only quibble I had was that one of the blokes managed to chip the paint off the architrave on the door frame with the foot on the ottoman, but as there were other chips of paint missing, it added to the aesthetics. As the blokes walked down the long driveway to the truck, wheeling my couch on their trolley, I sincerely hoped the next person or family who owns the couch enjoys it as much as we did.

With Penny not expecting to collect the fold up futon sofa until the weekend, I moved it into the position where the old couch was, and we will use the futon for the next few days.

I was really looking forward to the new couches arriving later this week. How silly to get so excited about such a small thing!

Earlier today, I called my old boss Dave Taylor at MAD Balloons to get a quote on some balloons for Lucas's funeral. MAD Dave, or Big Davey as I called him, was one of the most fun bosses I'd ever had the pleasure of working for, and it had been years since I had spoken to him. About 10 years ago, I worked for Dave for a period of about 12 months, setting up balloons and creating masterpieces at functions and events all over Sydney. The job was hell on the hands, but once I got use to the pain of slipping the balloon neck over my fingers and threading the ribbon onto the balloon at the same time, I was able to inflate and tie off about 350 balloons per hour.

As it was a Monday, I expected Dave's workshop to be fairly quiet, on recovery mode from the weekend. Dave answered the phone, and upon my greeting of "Hello Big Davey", he immediately recognised my voice and we launched into a big catch up. Dave always had a smile on his face, and you could always hear the smile over the phone. We chatted about Dave's family - Amy was turning 15, Jacob was 11 and Marelle was doing well with her business. I couldn't believe Amy was turning 15 and Jacob was a strapping lad of 11 - the last time I saw the kids, Amy was a toddler, and Jacob was a brand new baby sleeping in my arms! I told Dave about Jonathan and Sean, and in particular, about Sean's SCID. Dave was quite aware of SCID, as Jacob is a haemophiliac and required regular visits to doctors. We chatted away for a while, recalling good times of the past and having a laugh about how I usually late for work. In my defence, 6am starts in winter were rough in that cold garage-cum-workshop down the bottom of Big Davey's steep driveway!

Finally, I had to tell Dave why I was calling, and after a 5 minute history lesson on why NSW was the only state in Australia that banned mass balloon releases, Dave agreed to organise 2 10-balloon bouquets, to be delivered to the crematorium on Friday morning. Then came a lovely surprise - Dave would give me the balloons for free. I was more than happy to pay for the balloons, but Dave insisted on giving the balloons to Lucas for nothing, so I thanked him profusely and told him I owed him a case of beer. We made tentative plans to catch up, so I could see his family and he could meet mine. It would be nice to see Marelle again, and properly meet those gorgeous kids of theirs.

Our day ended with a drama that almost saw Jonathan's work laptop in pieces all over the living room floor. Just as I was dishing up dinner, Jonathan received a call from work, to alert him to a processing issue that he needed to look at and hopefully fix. Whilst writing the computer code to fix the issue, he left off an important part of the code, and just as he completed the task, he realised he was missing that important part of the code, and saw 11,000 line items being deleted right in front of his eyes in one fell swoop. There was a lot of cursing and cussing, and things being bashed and thrown about, and Jonathan went white as a sheet before the rage and frustration and panic turned his face beet red. Not good. Not good at all.

A few panicky phone calls were made, and as he was busy dealing with a potential disaster, I kept Sean busy and ate my dinner quietly. I bathed Sean and put him to bed, as the now huge issue would take hours to resolve. Three and a half hours after that fateful keystroke, Jonathan was finally able to resolve the situation, but he still needed to turn in an incident report tomorrow. Jonathan would never forget that piece of code ever again! Here's hoping he and his boss will be able to laugh at the situation at some point in the near future.