Happy New Year(?)

Xin nian kuai le - "Happy new year!"

Okay, I know I'm a few days behind (mainly because I discovered that I'd forgotten to post the last installment of our latest IKEA adventures!) but...

 Happy (Chinese) (Lunar) New Year!

This is the Year of the Ox, and it's the Pipsqueak's year -- the last time we were in the astrological realm of the horned bovine, she was busy being born and found.

 The Ox is the second of the twelve animals in the Chinse zodiac, a position it occupies because (according to legend) in the great race between animals decreed by the Jade Emperor to see what order they would be placed in, the large and powerful Ox was in the lead but agreed to help the smaller Rat across a river at the end. (Some versions of the legend say it simply agreed to carry Rat if he wold sing to keep the Ox from being bored during the long journey.)  Just before the finish line, the Rat jumped off Ox's back and scooted ahead to grab the winning spot.

The Chinese zodiac is quite a bit more complex than just the dozen animals we're all familiar with from restaurant place mats, so a more detailed description would be that this is the Year of the Metal Ox, associated with Yin (of Yin/Yang), with the "Xin" Celestial Branch and "Chou" Earthly Branch.  (This differs from Miri's birth year in that she was born under the Earth Ox with the "Ji" Celestial Branch.)

Gong xi fa cai - "Wishing you happiness and prosperity"

Individuals born under the sign of the Ox are said to be honest, diligent, earnest, and hard workers; they are usually skilled & talented but rarely seek out praise and prefer to not be the center of attention, thus earning recognition for their accomplishments through hard work rather than by drawing attention to themselves.  They are generally kind & helpful, even-tempered, and believe that each person should fulfill their responsibilities.  In particular, women born under the sign of the Ox are calm and gentle but rarely surrender to fate, working hard to achieve the goals they have chosen for themselves. This can lead to their being considered stubborn, but they are really just dedicated to following their own path as best they can -- and they are usually well-equipped to do so with sharp, logical minds.  Some sources say that Ox women lack a sense of humor, are prone to haggle, and may appear unapproachable.

Several of the sources I checked say that individuals born under the Ox in 2009 are likely to follow a path that requires hard work but no unusual hardships, and will likely earn a great deal of money through their efforts.  In the early years they will have trouble holding onto their money, but as time goes on they will be able to settle into a comfortable life thanks to earning proper rewards for their ongoing diligence, talent, and hard work.   (Dude, maybe that means your niece will be able to support you in your dotage...?!?)

Da ji da li - "Good luck and [have] a profitable year!"

 My niece is indeed honest, diligent, earnest, and a hard worker; there's a reason she's carrying straight A's in school while also taking various dance classes six days per week while also being a member of her studio's competitive dance team while also learning how to play the flute.  She loves it when her hard work is recognized and rewarded, but never goes out of her way to call attention to it (and gets annoyed when others around her begin grandstanding in an effort to be noticed).  She is amazingly caring, kind-hearted, and empathic, and her love is given unconditionally.  She has already decided that she wants to be a veterinarian and is taking steps to achieve that goal (even going so far as to discuss opening a joint practice with a friend who also wants to enter that profession).

Although she can indeed negotiate, haggle, and debate when she feels the need (when she was younger, we used to joke that she was practicing to become a trial lawyer), she differs from the standard lore in that she definitely does NOT lack a sense of humor, and usually has no trouble making friends when she meets new people.  (In fact, her sense of humor is undeniable, unavoidable, and sometimes rather loud!)

So why the question mark in the title?

Well, as I mentioned earlier, the Chinese zodiac comprises a full dozen animals -- and they each have a full year, as opposed to the Western zodiac's (roughly) 30-day period per astrological sign.  The last year of the Ox was 2009, and it won't come around again until 2034... when Miri will be an adult, attaining the ripe old age of 24.  Every year she's been home, we've attended at least some kind of special celebration & event to celebrate the turning of the year, and even in those years when major events have been cancelled or we could not attend we managed to have get-togethers with fellow adoptive families and attend at least one lion dance performance. So of course this year, which is her year for the first time since birth, there are no dance performances, no big celebrations, no lion dances, no big noisy luncheons with our friends... nada, bupkis, nuthin', zero.  (Thanks fer nuthin', SARS-nCOV-2, in all your damned variants, strains, and mutations.  And thanks fer nuthin', an administration that didn't give a damn.)

Miri has sad that she was disappointed in that of all the years she's experienced, the first go-round of her year was the one during which there really wasn't any way to celebrate.  Over the past 12 months, the special Patrol picnic at her school was cancelled, the year-end school picnic was cancelled, all her remaining elementary school classes suddenly became poorly presented online shadows of themselves, all the events celebrating the "graduation" from elementary school to middle school were cancelled, all her summer get-togethers with friends were cancelled, all the tours of her new middle school were morphed into videos on a laptop, our week-long beach vacation was cancelled, her middle school classes were morphed into semi-interactive videos on a laptop, many of her dance classes were (at least temporarily) changed into online sessions, the competitive dance season was essentially cancelled, multiple dance performances were cancelled or morphed into online videos in an almost deserted studio, and even the possibility of a couple of months of actual in-person schooling at the end of the academic year are looking like a total washout.

On top of that, several of the stricter lockdowns brought residual feelings of abandonment to the forefront of her memory, options for getting a leg up on various personal goals were eliminated or pushed back by at least a year... and we are all very much aware that there will be no Grandma & Grandpa to celebrate the New Year of the Ox the next time it comes around.  Add to that the stresses of dealing with some ongoing family medical issues and... yeah, it's a pretty sucky way to "celebrate" Miri's year the first (and only) time her entire family can be together for it.

We're doing what we can... funny shirts, some special gifts, hong bao (the kid's got more pocket cash than I do these days!), some decorations at home... but it's obviously far short of what we've been able to do every year up until this one.  It came to a head the other night when we had a celebratory dinner with our folks that featured several soups & dishes from our favorite Chinese restaurant.  Miri had her usual egg drop soup, white rice mixed with duck sauce, and some of the crunchy outer layers of an egg roll -- the kid just doesn't like Chinese food even though we had it at her request.  As we were finishing our meal, Miri just got quiet... and after a few more minutes had passed she was quietly crying in AJ's arms just because out of sheer frustration over the whole situation.

It wasn't too long before the Pipsqueak was back to her usual self, singing quietly to herself while dancing in the kitchen, then laughing at a silly video on her iPad after venting her frustrations over all that was not going right, but the message was clear: After years of waiting for "her" year, and after  what I sincerely hope is the toughest year of her life ever, nothing was going to plan and everything was at best "just okay" when she'd wanted (and earned) so much more.  (And I'm sure that the other Ox kids in our MIT group have been sharing the same letdown & disappointment.... I'm just writing this from a very personal perspective, I don't want to minimize their feelings in any way.)

So yeah, there's a question mark in my title... but we all remain hopeful while pushing through whatever it is we're trying to push through on a daily basis.  Miri is proudly maintaining straight A's in school and is willingly putting in whatever effort is required to do so.  She appeared in several dances in her studio's (delayed) annual recital, including her first-ever solo -- which she absolutely slayed -- all of which was watched online by family & friends scattered around the country.  The return to in-person schooling is pretty much dead for this academic year, but she's satisfied that she had a major role in that decision and spends time actually laughing at how blasé she is about it all now after months of steadily increasing anxiety about whether or not she'd be able to cope with middle school last summer & fall.  The vet who runs the clinic where all the family cats are patients has told her that once she's past her 12th birthday (due to insurance restrictions), there is an open invitation for her to spend time helping & observing behind the scenes so she can get a real taste of what it's like to be a vet while earning required credits for the school system.  We even managed to (finally!) have a zoom session with one of the families who traveled in China with us, and Miri and their daughter have connected via text & social media.

Yeah, some of what we're all dealing with absolutely sucks (on a good day), and she's beginning to experience (sometimes bemusedly, sometimes angrily, sometimes just quietly shaking her head) all the drama and craziness and sturm und drang that occurs naturally within a group of friends who are encountering hormones for the first time, but Miri knows we have her back when it matters, her best friends are still (mostly) truly her friends, and that she is doing what she needs to do in order to achieve the goals she has chosen for herself.  (And yes, AJ & I both independently talked with her about both the importance of working diligently to achieve her chosen professional goal and the fact that she will still have our support and plenty of other alternatives if she comes to the realization that it's not right for her  at some point.)

Things could certainly be better... but they could also be a lot worse.  We're all working together as a family to get through the rough stuff while still finding ways to have fun & celebrate the good things in life. The Pipsqueak knows she can (mostly) make her own choices and that someone's got her back when she does so, and absolutely any and all issues that come up are fair game for discussion, sharing, and brainstorming.

So, yes... Gong xi fa cai!  Happy New Year!

Another IKEA Adventure, Enfin le Fin (Ouch!)

[NOTE: This is a big oops -- I thought I had clicked on "Publish" back when I finished this entry, and only realized it was still an unpublished draft when I went into the system to write my next post!  So... on that note, here is the closing episode of our latest IKEA misadventures, just 3-1/2 weeks after I saved it as a draft "to publish in a couple of days"... <sigh>]

 

Okay, Smastad, it's me or you... and I'm the only me I've got, so it's gonna be you.

At least that was my attitude when the time came to finish the stupid desk and finally be DONE with it.  After all, we were all planning to get together for a family dinner that night...

Yeah, like that happened. <sigh>

As I stood in Miri's room and tried to visualize how we'd fit all the pieces into the available space, I realized that since we were building the entire thing as a mirror image of our original plan, the desk would now be directly in front of the electrical outlet we planned to use for lighting on both the desk and the bed above it... leaving no way to actually plug anything in.  AJ & I sort of stood there just looking at each other for a minute, and then I drove back up to where I had come from (literally passing my own house on the way) and visited the "Electrical" aisle at the local Home Depot.  My plan was to buy a sideways multi-tap to replace the regular outlets, along with a new surge suppressor to replace the one AJ used to charge her laptop which had begun to spark every time something was plugged into it.

Well, I guess a lot of folks got electronics for Christmas this year, because that aisle was thoroughly picked through.  After resorting to Plan B, then Plan C, I finally settled on Plan D and grabbed a couple of extension cord/surge suppressors that had flat, sideways-facing wall plugs. (I got two different models because there was literally just one of every such item left below the $50 mark.)  Mission accomplished, I re-retraced my steps (in the car) and returned to AJ & Miri's to dive back into the IKEA construction project, which I had sworn to myself would be finished today, come hell or high water.

First, there was the usual hauling of boxes from the garage to the living room, the fight to open the boxes up, and then the hauling of furniture parts up another flight of stairs into Miri's room.  Then came the usual counting of pegs and cams and bolt and other bits of hardware, followed by the usual round of, "What the heck is that... oh... maybe...?" while leafing through the instructions before actually trying to join pieces together. (Note: ALWAYS a good idea, since there are occasional surprises hidden in there... and not always pleasant surprises at that.)

After figuring out what comprised "left" and "right" (there were multiple ways to assemble the entire piece of furniture, each requiring we start on a different page of the instructions and each changing the location of certain boards and/or fasteners), then hunting down the Phillips head screwdriver that seemed to walk out of the room on its own (eventually located under several other tools), we got to work and soon had... a large white box.

(In retrospect, we had actually assembled something that looked like it belonged in an etching by M.C. Escher, but... yeah, it was a box.)

Now it was once again time for a game of, "Is this the left, or is this...?" until we got what would be the actual top surface of the desk attached to our Escher-ish construct. The momentary feeling of victory was tempered by the realization that we had to now shoehorn the whole thing into the bottom of the bed completed bed frame... with zero clearance because it bolted directly to the bed frame on each side... but that we also had to line up bolt holes on the back of the desk and bed frame, so the entire construct had to be pulled away from the wall to give us enough room to work behind it as well as inside it.  (Did I mention that Miri's bedroom is actually rather small and already has other furniture occupying space against the opposite wall...?) It didn't take too much thinking to figure out that because of the space (not) available in the room, AJ was going to have to squeeze in behind the frame because her larger brother with his creakier joints was unlikely to fit... or to be able to get back out from behind the frame if he somehow managed to get behind it in the first place...  (Obviously, I did manage to squeeze in far enough around one end to photograph my sister's contortions as she tried to get back out from the space she'd gotten into!)

With all the major components finally bolted together (including a couple of bolts driven in "blind" through the closet at one end which miraculously lined up perfectly with their holes), it was time to put together the drawers for the desk.  AJ showed me the page in the instructions that showed where the drawer slides had to be installed in the desk and set about putting the drawers themselves together while I tried (with minimal success) to contort myself into a position that wold simultaneously allow me to screw the drawer slides into place while also still breathing.

About those drawer slides... The Smastad desk could be built with two, three, or four drawers; we were going for the three-drawer version, and the instruction book very clearly laid out exactly where the slides were supposed to go; the inner surface of both side of the "box" of the desk had long rows of pre-drilled holes and the instructions showed not only a line drawing of the proper locations, but also gave the number (counting up from the bottom) of which holes should be used for attaching the rails for each version of the desk.  AJ even commented that I needed to put the slides into such-and-such a hole for each drawer.

Guess what I did? 

I'll give you a hint. On the left is my original install; on the right, the final install.  <sigh>

Despite my sister's smirk -- and the requirement for me to periodically crawl back out from under the desk and give parts of each drawer she was working on a good smack! to lock them in place -- we soon had the desk completed and stepped back to admire the fruits of our labors.

(We're still not sure if we picked up the correct drawer front for the big one, but we ain't changing' nuthin' else if we don't have to!). Throughout the construction process, Miri had been hovering nearby but due to lack of space she finally retreated to the living room sofa (with her iPad, of course) and would come running up when we called her to help find things, or move things, figure out how she wanted things, etc. etc. etc.  Now we called her up and after a little victory dance, the Pipsqueak began to experiment with placing various items and soon had her new desk set up the way she wanted it.

The next step was to put the doors on the small closet located at one end of the bed frame, which went swimmingly once we shifted the entire eleventy-seven ton piece a few inches farther from the wall so I could fit into the space.  The almost infinitely adjustable hinges actually lined up nicely with very little tweaking, and I felt pretty good about the whole thing until I stood up and forgot about the shelf over my head.  Luckily, the furniture was undamaged and my head stopped hurting a couple of hours later.

Miri excitedly began hanging clothing in the new closet, and hanging clothing in the new closet, and hanging clothing in the new closet... until there was a loud crash as one end of the bar across the closet gave way under the weight.  After advising the Pipsqueak that maybe putting all her clothes there wasn't a great idea (and figuring out how to put the parts back together in a slightly different arrangement), we took a few minutes to gather up all the assorted pieces of cardboard on the floor and generally try to put the room back together.

One last task was to get the most loved (and possibly most fragile) picture back up safely on the wall. Of course, lil' sis had no idea where her stepladder had gotten to, and the little folding step stool she had was too short for me to reach high enough... so after double-checking the bed's weight limits one more time  she got up into the elevated bed while I used a tape measure & pencil on the wall to show her where to hammer in a nail (while I carefully made sure I was not standing under the hammer) and our uncle's Pooh painting was soon once again hanging in a safe spot.

With a collective sigh, we all went downstairs, Calle Mom to let her know we'd have to do a family dinner some other night because it was getting late & we could barely move, and plopped down on the couch to take a breather.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Y'see, AJ had had to buy several sets of scrubs for work because (even though not a nurse) she was in direct contact with residents & patients -- and given the current virus situation, the more separation between what she wore at work and everything else she wore, the better.  While at IKEA, she had found a small chest of drawers that would let her store all her scrubs separate from her regular clothes... and her foolish brother had said sure, he'd help her put it together.

First we hauled up one of the two remaining boxes from the garage, laid all the pieces out, compared them to the drawings in the instruction booklet, and realized we needed to open both boxes (of course there was more than one box of furniture parts for this small chest!) in order to have all the parts needed for Step 1 of the instructions.  After a few more minutes of prying, sorting, and shuffling around on the floor, we had everything laid out and ready to go...

With Miri kibitzing, we figured out which side was which, figured out which end was which, counted out all the pieces of hardware, and began assembly. I mean, c'mon, it's jus a small  chest with three drawers, how hard could it be?

First, the drawer rails are attached to the sides... No, that one has to flip around... No, use these holes for the screws, not those... Why doesn't this peg fit into the ho-... oohh... 

Seriously, this darn thing just refused to go together despite us carefully distributing the work between us and coordinating with each other on each step.  After the massive project that was the bed frame, we were finding this little thing a lot harder to assemble!  Eventually, all the different parts that formed the outside of the chest were together and... Oops, no, we put that piece on backwards, can these be pulled back apart without undoing the whole thing....?  Finally, after a ridiculously long time (due in part to us being tired and sore), something vaguely resembling the picture on the instruction booklet was occupying the space formerly occupied by a whole bunch of different parts.

Now it was time for the drawers. Again, no problem, right...?  <sigh>

Despite us having successfully assembled four almost identical drawers already (3 for the desk, 1 in the bottom of the closet), these were just plain uncooperative. Snap-in parts had to go just so or they wouldn't snap in, pegs and holes kept slipping out of alignment... Add in our increasing exhaustion (and crankiness), and the whole process soon devolved into the two of us quietly cussing at no one in particular as part after part exerted its independence while Miri kept a safe distance from it all (my niece ain't no dummy).  Finally, after realizing we'd reversed the position of one key component on each of all three drawers, all the parts fit together as intended and we were ready to place the chest in its new home.

Now, let's get one thing straight: my sister is an intelligent, educated, and capable woman... but she has a somewhat rocky relationship with numbers and measures. The result was that after carrying all the parts of the little chest up to her room, we had to again play a game of, "What If That Was Moved There?" and "Can You Push That Over Another Inch?" and a few other closely-related games until finally, with a sense of accomplishment that no measure of exhaustion or soreness of body joints could diminish, the last of the IKEA pieces was complete and planted firmly in place.

It may appear innocent, but looks can be deceiving!

After helping gather one last crop of assorted cardboard, bits of plastic bag, et al., I bid my sister & niece goodnight, drove home, downed a couple of Aleve capsules, and gently creaked & groaned my way into bed.

It had taken half a year of waiting and many painful hours of work, but the Pipsqueak had her new loft bed (with desk and closet) and AJ had her scrubs storage. Yay, us!