posted by Ashalah on Life

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Sometimes you have good luck, sometimes you have bad. Over the past couple weeks I’ve had a batch of some bad luck, starting with my bout with MRSA (which isn’t over apparently), then moving on to poor sales at work and then finally culminated in last nights fiasco with my new sofa.

I have been on the hunt for a new sofa for a few weeks now, scouring Craigslist, World Market, even American Furniture Warehouse. I had a good laugh at the countless overstuffed ugly sofas labeled “beautiful and modern” that made up the majority of Craigslist’s ads. It was a long process but I finally found one. A gorgeous Room & Board sofa that was comfortable, in my price range and, while a little bit bigger than what the space was comfortably allowing for, I space planned the shit out of it and made it work.

The only problem was getting it into the apartment. My friend Chad met me at the woman’s house and we loaded it up no problem. We got to my apartment, got it into the apartment building just fine and then attempted to get it into my apartment. For a good hour we stood in the hallway, angling and re-angling the sofa. It was not going in. I was frazzled, as I tend to get when things aren’t going well, and we decided to leave it out in my parking space overnight until I could get someone to get it up over my balcony.

You would think that’d be the worst luck of the night.

Getting it out of the apartment building proved a lot harder than expected. I ripped my brand new dress (don’t ask me why I was moving in a dress. I was coming from work and on my way to a party which I never made it to) on a nail, had the sofa slip and hit me full on in the face leaving me seeing stars and nearly destroyed the sofa getting it out of the door.

At this point frazzled was too light of a term to be using to describe my mental state. We tarped it, bungee corded it and parked my car in front of it, hoping that would deter any homeless people from sleeping on it or anyone trying to take it. Not knowing what to do with a very nice sofa taking residence in my parking lot unattended, I opted for pajamas and Alice in Wonderland on Netflix streaming to round off my night.

Bad luck has a way of turning around. My sofa survived an entire evening outside by itself. Shortly after waking up and realizing it was going to snow this evening, I tweeted that I needed help getting the sofa in ASAP and within minutes my phone was ringing with some of my wonderful friends (whom I didn’t want to wake up just yet to ask) offering to pick me up from work on my lunch break and help me get the sofa inside. I don’t think they knew what was in store.

All I have to say is that I wish there was a video camera filming us hoisting a sofa over my balcony which was a half-a-floor up. It was right up there with Friends’ PIVOTTTTT scene with Ross, a sofa and a stairwell.

James and David had no problems getting it up to where Grace and I could reach it to pull it onto the balcony. We clumsily latched onto the only thing we could hold onto: the arm of the sofa. We have about 6 inches of an 85″ sofa balanced precariously on a small balcony ledge and as it’s pivoting upwards towards us all we hear is David shouting from below:

“Do you have it?! DO YOU HAVE IT?! WE ARE REACHING THE POINT OF NO RETURN!”

Gravity was putting up a good fight with the 79 other inches of the sofa making it lean precariously towards the ground. Grace and I held onto that arm with all of our might while the boys feared for the life of the sofa which was now entirely in our hands, about ten or so feet off the ground. Did I mention the two of us may have been practically doubled over in laughter? In between our screams of course.

Somehow, and I mean somehow, Grace and I managed to wrangle that sofa into the balcony all by ourselves. The rest was a piece of cake after that, especially after last night’s attempt at getting it through the door.

I’m now sitting on it, the cat passed out in a coma beside me, my christmas tree all lit up and christmas music on the pandora. It’s so cozy and comfy and while it is a tad bit ginormous, I love it. I can actually cozy up, something I was unable to do on my last sofa. It was worth all the hassle and stress that I went through over the past 36 hours just trying to get it into my apartment.

Just when you think things are going badly and you’re going to have to quickly resell that new sofa of yours, a batch of amazing friends come through and make it work out. Life has a way of doing that, of turning things around. Never forget that. Never forget the pivot.