April 9, 2021
Dear Everyone:
My new cart arrived yesterday, while I was in a
Zoom meeting with “The Wood Family”.
In this case, the meeting consisted of “Jeannie”, “Frankie”,
“Park” and “Rosa”, with “Alice” valiantly trying to connect with her
recalcitrant machine. I’m
not sure why “Alice” has so much trouble.
It’s enough to make a person consider giving up on technology
altogether.
This weekly meeting started last year when we
all suddenly couldn’t fly across the country or even go out to lunch on
the weekends. I set up a
Zoom meeting that went well, so we decided to meet regularly, just to
keep in touch. Recently, one
person requested that we change the day of the week; and another person
suggested adding “the boys”.
I dutifully added their email addresses to the previous ones when I
regularly send out the announcement and link for the upcoming meeting.
So far, changing from Mondays to Thursdays has
worked out OK. As for “the
boys”, they apparently have better things to do.
So, in the past two weeks, we’re 2 for 2 in meeting on Thursday;
and 0 for 2 in seeing any of the menfolk.
During this week’s meeting, my cell phone made
that charming noise that indicates something has happened.
It could be
An email has arrived
A text message has arrived
A “terribly important” notification from Google
has arrived
A “terribly important” notification from
Samsung has arrived
The latter two are eminently ignorable.
In this case, it was a text message that one of
my orders had arrived. I got
up and went to the front door.
Sure enough, there was a large, slightly-battered cardboard box
sitting against the wall. I
definitely did not hear a knock on the door to indicate that UPS
had made a delivery.
My previous upstairs neighbors had two dogs who
set up a considerable racket whenever the UPS truck stopped in front of
our building. There are
times when I miss those dogs.
In any case, the order had arrived.
Now I just had to deal with the “Some assembly required” part.
The cart consisted of three shelves, four casters and eight
connecting posts.
Putting the whole thing together was actually
quite easy, although my new upstairs neighbors might have wondered about
the “Whack! Whack!
Whack!” coming from below their dining room.
Having that rubber mallet made all the
difference. Now that I have
one, it will be a temptation to see where it might come in handy.
(“I’ll bet I can ‘Whack!’ that thing into position any time I
want to.”)
Once assembled, I realized that the new cart
was larger than the old one.
Specifically, it is several inches taller.
No problem. When I’m
taking clothes out of the dryer, I’m usually standing on a small step
stool, so dropping things into the basket on top of the cart will not
present any difficulty.
More importantly, the new cart is large enough
to accommodate the plastic laundry basket on the second shelf!
Many is the time that I’ve wished I could stash that basket on
the lower shelf and now I can.
Oh, frabjous joy!
This morning I took it for a “Test Drive” in
which it performed admirably.
Just a little “spin around the block”, but it indicates that the
large wheels go over the carpet easily and it manages the tight, almost
hairpin, turns going from one bedroom into the hallway and back into the
other bedroom with simple grace.
Technically, it’s a “book cart”, but it makes a
very agreeable laundry cart and general utility transport.
Five stars and a favorable review on its way.
Love, as always,
Pete