The Fellowship of the Chairs

An Unexpected Journey

In all of our lives, we will have times when familial duty beckons us to unforeseen adventure. This is especially the case when one's wife is a Kijiji ninja like Chrissy. At exactly 9:04am, I received an urgent telegram (ie., email) from her requesting a furniture pick-up for that evening. For the past seven years, we have been using the cheapest of all cheap chairs for our dining room table; but Chrissy had somehow located six really nice Ikea chairs for an absolutely unbeatable price, as only she can do, I think. 

(The man who was selling the furniture eventually joked that he had been "Chrissy-ed" when I told him that she routinely offers just over the asking price to ensure that she beats out her competitors.)

At any rate, my task was clear: I was to travel to the distant land of Orléans, negotiate with a potentially hostile buyer (you never know), make the purchase, secure the goods, and return home safely in time to continue plowing through my legendary marking stack.

Clearly, I was in over my head and needed some backup. Thus, the Fellowship of the Chairs was born, consisting of me and my trusty elf partner, Janna.

The heroes clench their fists in defiance of the nearly unspeakable dangers they are about to face.  Despite my repeated explanations regarding the nature of our mission, Janna insists that we are going to a "Bible study". She inexplicably continues to use this terminology throughout the remainder of the evening.

The exchange has been made. Unfortunately, in order to get all the furniture into the van, I had to confine Janna to her car seat for about half an hour while I moved car seats around and tried to fit everything in. During this time, she was tragically terrorized by at least two mosquitoes and and two "shoo flies", resulting in long bouts of uncontrollable screaming.

For all that, when we had finally packed everything in and hit the road, Janna looked at me and said with a little smile on her face, "I had a fun date, Dad!" I almost wept. Then we celebrated by having a driving dance party to various hit songs on the radio. (I taught her some excellent shoulder-rotating moves.)

Mission accomplished. Our living room is now complete, and my work station, complete with marking, blueberries, and gluten-free pretzels, awaits. Little Janna has happily gone to bed, having excited told Chrissy that she had gone to a fun Bible study with Dad.

Well, now that the adventure is over, the marking awaits. Unfortunately, not much will get done tonight, but I have high hopes for tomorrow. (Unfortunately, this is also what all teachers say every night. But it's true! I will have photographic proof tomorrow.)

With steel and determination,

Until next time...