The flight of the cabinet... and tales of home improvement

One day I woke up, blinked a few times, and realized that my apartment was a. filthy and b. cluttered. For a girl whose grandmother carried bottles of liquid cleaner and rubber gloves around in the trunk of her car, this realization was simply unacceptable.

So measures had to be taken. Step one: break a window and duct tape up some screen to provide air flow throught the apartment: SUCCESS. Step two: rearrange and clean the four square feet of space that is your kitchen in order to have room to put food items in there too rather than having all of your m&m's, crackers, and jars of beans exposed to the world. After the tragic loss of a few dishes: SUCCESS. Step three: look at the bare spot where the "pantry" bookshelf used to be in wonder. Step four: Buy a cabinet to fill the void and hide all the random junk which has very overtly been collecting dust in various corners of your home.

Yesterday I just had a feeling about step four. There was something in the air and I knew it was time. So after lunch with one of my Tibetan friends, Droma, we decided to tackle the beast and walked to the used furniture market in Lhasa.

I love this place; it's like a dream for the crazy, near busted, used to be something we can no longer tell what that was enthusiast. I often go to this street just to putter around and imagine where all that stuff came from. The stories that are scratched into the wooden tables, the memories that are stained onto a mattress, the history displayed in the cockeyed chair legs that defy gravity... all these things are just compelling to me. There is no other place in Lhasa where I would buy a cabinet, and probably no other place where I could afford a cabinet.

Knowing vaguely what I wanted, it didn't take Droma and I very long to find the piece of furniture which is now resting in my home. Allow me to describe this item to you: It's big, with a base coat of red, peeling paint. Four doors on which are painted some very obscure variety of flowers, fruit, and something that might be a mushroom cloud. Along the sides are small lime green frames with pink flowers arranged on it and the whole deal shows evidence of someone going to town with some puff paint and a bedazzaler for wood. In short: it looks like a trailer park at Christmas. I love it.

After some brief bargaining with the Uigher lady who's husband owned the shop we get it for a reasonable price of about 40 dollars. She assures us that it's not too big to fit on one of the bike trolleys and goes to fetch a slim little chinese man with a straw hat and a t-shirt tucked into his sweatpants that are pulled up past his waist who will cart it to my home for 2 dollars. He repeatedly assures Droma that he knows where my school is, we agree to walk and meet him there as my school is literally only a 15 minute walk away, like a 7 minute bike ride.

So picture this cabinet tied precariously to the back of a bike trolley being driven by a man less than half the size of the thing in the blazing Lhasa sun. As we walk behind the cabinet Droma says to me "Look at your furniture Kelly!" with an air of satisfaction to which I could only reply... "where is it going?" Picture my cabinet going in the clear opposite direction from the school.

"Oh your furniture!" and we take off in sprints after it, Droma with umbrella flailing, me with bag slapping against my back... we get to the intersection where it turned and Droma lets out a yell that put a stop to the man and our cabinet despite the fact that it was easily more than ten yards down the wrong street. A Tibetan girl and a white girl stand in the intersection motioning towards the correct street. A man with a cabinet motioning the other way. Two girls stomping in the intersection and making a show of anger than can clearly be seen from even that distance. A man with a cabinet turning around to catch up with us.

We put him going in the right direction and resume walking ourselves. Ten minutes later we arrive at the school. Thirty minutes later my cabinet does not. Forty-five minutes later it does not. "Oh furniture lagsha (lost)" we moan. Hot, sweaty, with other things to do than wait for this man to bike less than half a mile down the street Droma decides to continue to wait at the school while I, with another Tibetan friend on the back of my bike, go back to the furniture place to see if he just got lost. We arrive at the same lady's shop and she acts like she's never seen me before. A phone call to Droma who takes a taxi to meet us there changes all that.

As I rest on a used mattress playing games with two small Uigher girls and teaching them to write my name in English, Droma lays into this woman with the full force of angry Chinese: "where is the furniture? Call that man! You don't have his number? You told us to use this man, maybe you are just trying to take our money. How about you give us our money back and when he comes we'll pay you." At that suggesstion the lady calls the man.

She calls the man who, get this, has been sitting at the wrong school gate for now well over an hour. By the time that we have said our goodbyes to the Uigher children and arrived back at my school we find the man and our cabinet parked in the shade reading a paper. Fifteen minutes later it's inside my house.

Total time elapsed for the completion of step four: three and a half hours. Three of those hours was spent on a joy ride for my cabinet.

Life is exciting isn't it? Now year round I can enjoy the flash of a trailer park at Christmas and ruminate on the furtherance of my home improvement plans...