Welcome to the World, Baby Girl

Enough time has passed now and P has had the chance to send out an e-mail and make some phone calls for me to tell this story, which I have titled for obvious reasons. However, another name could be "Futons for Dummies."

My dear friends, P & E, had their baby girl yesterday (and let me commend little Rebecca on her excellent taste in birth months). I get along famously with P & E's dog, Dudley, and have doggysat for him in the past, so while the expectant parents were away, I looked after the Dudster. (And of course, there is also the slightly portly, although much svelter since her diet, kitty Snagglepuss).

As mentioned in a previous posting, it has been an emotional week. This was punctuated yesterday by the fact that P & E are the first of my friends to have a baby. As I drove to their house, the rain showers of the day cleared up and the sun started to peak through, creating the first rainbow I have seen in quite a long time. It was an auspicious event, and one I shall be sure to embarrass baby Rebecca with when she is a teenager. Needless to say, being me, I teared up.

Back at the ranch, after I made some dinner, moaned and groaned about the lack of The O.C., and became exasperated with the man from Crawford, I decided I should open up the futon in the guest room. I have never owned a futon before, and while I have slept on one, I have never had to open it up. I knew this would not go well.

Dudley was clearly concerned - he sleeps on the futon and he followed me into the guest room while I started moving it about, poking at the wood frame in an attempt to figure it out. He hopped around on the floor nervously, or worse, would cock his head to the side, looking troubled. Nothing seemed to work, and at this point, Snags had come into the room to see what all the cursing and fussing was about.

I gave up after 10 minutes. Who owns a futon? Who can help me? Anhabelle.

The phone conversation:

Megs: I feel silly about this, but I've never opened a futon before and I can't figure it out. I was trying to get it open, but I'm afraid I might break it or knock myself unconscious.
Anhabelle: No! Don't break it!
Megs: Well, what should I do?!?!
Anhabelle: You have to pull up and away on the back.

Yeah, so it turns out that this futon doesn't exactly open like that. After pulling with all my little might on the back of the futon, nothing happened. Granted, I'm somewhat of a weakling, but is it supposed to be this hard?

I decided to inspect the base. After a few good tugs, it started to give way, but rather than turn into a flat bed, it was more of a see-saw. Not what I had envisioned. I climbed onto this teeter-totter in the hopes that tossing my weight on the offending back would flatten it out. Au contraire. First, Dudley thought this looked like fun and decided to hop on and "help." After I shooed him off, I hopped on for a second try.

I'm sure you can see where this is going. As I tossed myself onto the back, the futon teetered with me and sent me, somersaulting, to the other side of the bed. I clearly have no future as a gymnast. As I lay crammed between the futon and the wall, Dudley, who had jumped back onto the see-saw futon, peeked over at me from the bed as if to say, "perhaps you should sleep on the couch."

"Screw that!" I declared. This futon will open! And it ultimately did, although if you ask me how I did it, I'm not sure I could tell you.

I fell asleep on the futon a few hours later thinking of Rebecca and her parents. Welcome to the world of clumsy surrogate aunts and caring little dogs. Welcome to the world, baby girl.