Sunday, January 10, 2010

Lusting After a Bedframe

I have wanted a bed frame forever. I sleep on a mattress on the floor and this is just fine, except it gets dirty so easily and sometimes, with my old joints, it's hard to get down to and up from.

I should have built one when my tool battery would still recharge, but I didn't. I saw some at Ikea on New Year's Day, that made me drool. I went up to have lunch with my brother and his wife, and my brother wanted me to "experience" Ikea. And it is like another world. I didn't know it was the way it is. I had never been inside one before.

It can make me drool, that's for sure, and want things I can't have.

My brother was enamored with the space units, that show how everything you need, i.e., bed, kitchen and bathroom, can fit into a very small area, if the space is well planned. I already knew this from living in the tiny shack. I like small living spaces in fact, less work, more efficient. I really liked the size of the shack I lived in. It was perfect for one person. However, that shack had no insulation, no real heat, well anyhow. That shack was an example of waste.

The Ikea space solvers was something different and very impressive.

But I saw a couch that folds into a bed really easily and that bed frame that was metal, as I hoped for, and a twin over a full.

Alas, it's still out of my realistic price range. So is the couch/bed. I've continued to look at thrift stores for a decent couch. Garage sale season will be here by May, too, and I can't wait. I am also looking for a decent chair.

I'm going to make the bed frame. My only problem with making a simple bed frame is that I have no working power tools. I am going to solve that too. I visit and revisit thrift stores and the Habitat Stores. I'll find something soon. I may have the wood needed here, for a basic frame already, will just have to search through my used and reused wood pile.

The other problem I have had for two weeks now has been one thumb, which suddenly swelled at the joint and become unbendable. I don't think it is arthritis. Occasionally I get arthritis like lumps in the joints of both thumbs. This usually happens due to a combo of two things: over use and eating too much bread. I can't really process gluten very well, and it makes my joints swell.

Well, just those two joints and, I was bitten through both joints. The right thumb sustained a horrific bite wound. This happened in Eugene years ago, when a cat got loose from a caregiver's "birdcage" carrier she brought the cat to the clinic in. I was oft called on to track down and net loose cats but I never heard about this cat being loose until late in the day. I wasn't told, until afterwards either, that the poor cat had been run over in the meantime. The cat was spotted and I was called to catch it from the clinic, but others for some reason could not contain their urge to chase the cat.

I finally got it in a position where I like to net, walking along a building wall. You don't chase a loose scared or feral cat, you herd them somewhere, benignly and quietly, to somewhere you have a chance to net them and then you transfer from the net to a carrier very quietly and calmly, simply by giving the cat the option of hiding from you in a dark place. Not by force.

I pull back, so the cat thinks it can get by me, then get the net in front of it, in a lightning fast move. The cat runs into the net, then I clamp the net hoop flat on the ground and kneel on the hoop edge. The cat moves into the end of the netting. I put a towel over the netting and the cat to keep the cat calm. I put the hoop opening of the net over a carrier, and push the cat back through the net into the carrier and close the door. This is relatively easy.

I don't like nylon fishing nets. The netting is stiff and not very workable for netting cats. I have a home made net now and I've used it forever. I don't see any reason to replace it. I will try to find some netting soon, to redo it, because the old volleyball netting in place now is rotting. I've repaired it about as many times as it can be repaired. That reminds me, I need to look for something like that again too at thrift stores. Back to the story....

But there was interference. A crowd of hyped up "chasers" raced up once I had the cat in the net. A woman threw another net over the cat and would not back off, despite me telling her to. She would not be quiet.

Distracted, trying to keep the others away and get the frightened cat into the carrier(it was actually a dying cat due to being run over although I did not know then), I was bitten severely by the cat repeatedly, through that thumb joint and through the top joint of my index finger.

The lasting effect is my damaged finger and thumb joints that swell with much use and sometimes won't bend. I felt terrible for the poor cat, too. I understood why she bit me. When I think about this incident, I think about another. It was years ago, also, and I was at SafeHaven for some reason. They had a semi feral cat there, who had been injured too.

The next day, I had called them back to say I'd take the cat and the woman said the cat had hissed at her, so she killed it. She actually sounded like she was boasting about this behavior. Like she'd won or "boy I showed that cat", that sort of attitude.

There was no empathy to her statement. The cat hissed at her, so she killed it. Unbelievable. I was astonished that a shelter worker would not understand that an injured cat would be terribly frightened and consider someone reaching directly into a carrier toward it a threat and hiss. For gosh sakes. I didn't go backSafeHaven forever. That woman quit working there at some point later. Her statement and actions in regard to that one cat colored my view of SafeHaven for a very long time, however.

But this time my thumb problem was something different. My thumb almost felt out of joint and would make snapping sounds and hurt along the front to move. Maybe a tendon or ligament got pulled. I don't know, but I do know I haven't been able to use it much without making it worse. It is gradually getting better.

I have the plans drawn up for the bed frame. I'll have it done I bet within two weeks.

I also saved part of the old couch, the one I tore apart for disposal because it was soo awful. I had no way to dispose of it, other than to systematically tear it apart. That wasn't easy. It was put together with real long staples and that might be how I hurt my thumb.

This couch was the $10 couch from Goodwill I got two years ago. It lasted ok for a couch badly damaged and yukked up before I even brought it here. I'm going to make a new sitting arangement out of the useful large part of it I saved. And out of two ends of the old couch, that made the arm rests before, I'm going to make outside window planters. Or salad gardens.

And for now, to sit, I have a kitchen table chair. It's rickety however. And I have an old recliner.

The rocker recliner, which was headed for Goodwill until I asked for it, a few years ago, is uncomfortable because it's a rocker and it has no stop to keep it from rocking. The seat is high enough that my legs don't touch ground if sitting staight up. In other words, it was poorly designed or at the least, doesn't fit my body to be comfortable to sit on. I removed the cushion that bulges outward from the top of the back of the chair, which made sitting terribly uncomfortable because it propels your upper back, neck and head forward. Who designs these things?

That chair does deserve a trip to Goodwill or a junk or burnpile, I have to say. It will get what it deserves very soon. Or, it will become a permanent cat structure of some sort.

I'm after a chair, a couch and a bedframe. I'll be making two of those three items, to save on dough and because I need something to sit on soon. As for a chair, I am confident I will find one in a thrift store or garage sale soon.

Here's a good thing: I got an exercise bike. I didn't think it would work out. It had been sitting in a shop for a long time. The control panel was long gone and it had an unrelated bike seat propped in loose where the seat goes. It was a child's bike seat. The original seat was long gone, too, as was the screw in seat height adjustor knob. I was going to take it to the metal recycler, convinced this was a piece of junk and maybe it is.

Then I thought maybe I could make it work out. I cut a piece of pvc pipe I had laying around that would fit inside the pipe that holds the seat. I took a seat off one of two broken down bikes I have here, that are unfixable and need to go. The seat at least was a little wider than that kid's seat and the pipe on it was a lot longer.

I measured the maximum height I could have for the seat, if the pipe on the seat was inserted into the pipe on the exercycle and still not wobble and fall off, without the adjustment bolt, since I couldn't find anything that would fit the threads on that adjustment hole. Then I cut the pvc piece and dropped it into the exercycle seat holding pipe and put the seat pipe inside the exercycle pipe to rest on the pvc at the height I wanted.

Now I can ride it, although the seat spins and wobbles some. It is not exactly comfortable nor the right height, but I can ride it twenty minutes without severe butt pain. I'm still looking for a knob with bolt the right size and with threads that will work in that adjustment hole. Until then, I'm getting some exercise anyhow! I'll watch at thrift stores for a better seat, too. I'm thinking if I could make or find a fork on a pipe, then I'd rig a sling seat. That might work best because a free hanging sling seat would adjust right to angle too automatically.

4 comments:

  1. did you guys go to ikea?
    very brave of you. that place is a madhouse :) i can only go on a friday nite (when it's usually pretty quiet) but now all the check-outs are self check-outs which stresses me to no end. plus i always see more than my list of what to get..but we do get our comfortorer and pillows there- $10 bucks a comforter and 99cents a pillow not to bad..of course it's not HI quality but works for me :)

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  2. The Ikea store is way up in N. Portland. They also charge an arm and leg to deliver, if you buy something that won't fit in your car. Yes, it was a mad house and I just wanted out soon. My brother wouldn't leave the yellow arrows, which basically herd you through the entire store like sheep in a way. My brother says they do it that way to up sales. I had seen bed frames off in another direction and he wouldn't let me leave the yellow arrow path, to go there. I thought that was a little Twilight Zoney.

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  3. follow the yellow brick arrows....haha...we used to buy everything from ikea in baltimore..we'd tie the boxes to the top ogf my station wagon and get em home and john would put together whatever we got...we got some nice stuff from the scratch n dent secion too - a beautiful cherry wood buffet with barely a scratch - marked down to 79.99 instead of over four hundred dollars...a cherry wood dresser for me for under sixty instead of two hundred fifty nine...plus a kitchen table and chairs...bookcases...i could go on..i love ikea...miss shopping there. My husband still drinks his coffee from the oversize mug and saucer set i bought him there - one buck special at the time -
    Jody you could be a candidate for
    This Old House show!

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  4. Hi,

    Have you ever tried craigslist.org? you can get lots of free or cheap stuff and sometimes people will deliver it to you.

    Also, have you ever heard about the new studies being done about stray cats? That some organizations are having great success with just fixing the dominant male cats in a feral/stray colony and it reduces pregnancy by just as much as spaying/nuetering all the cats. If this pans out to be true for all cases it would save so much time, money and life. And we know how much quicker easier it is to just neuter males than spay.

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