SHOW & TELL SATURDAY: Stuck. REALLY Stuck.

Well, then. I almost called this post, "Adventures in Overconfidence." What you see in the photo is the result of my attempts to get the little hide-a-bed loveseat we told Mama we'd bring her up the stairs.

See, when the DH was getting ready to leave for her place the other day, I reminded him of that, and we traipsed downstairs to get the loveseat.

DH expressed some irritation that I hadn't cleared it off already. (It had a basket and some platters on it, as well as a cover. Anything I don't want the dog sleeping on has "stuff" on the seats!) It only took a couple of minutes to remove everything and the cushions, and we tilted it up on end.

DH was later getting out of the house than he wanted to be, and was becoming more and more tense as we wrestled with the piece, enough so that I said, "Leave it! Just leave it, and you can take it up next time!"

So he did. And after he left, I says to myself, says I, "I'll do it. I'll take the mattress out, and have the sofa upstairs when he comes home."

I put the sofa back down, took off the strapping that kept the hide-a-bed from coming out, removed the mattress and carried it upstairs, restrapped the hide-a-bed mechanism, and proceeded to stand the sofa upright again.

I couldn't lift it. (That should have been a red light for me, right?) But I can be pretty ingenious; I stuck the platform of the hand truck under it, and s-l-o-w-l-y pulled back on the handle until the hand truck was lying flat on the floor, with the end of the sofa now raised maybe a foot off the ground.

I'm not sure now quite how I got it the rest of the way vertical, but I did. Then I started pushing it to the basement door. Thank goodness we don't have carpet there! Back and forth, angling left then right, left then right, inch by inch, backing it up because it got stuck between the treadle sewing machine cabinet and the curio cabinet, maneuvering the thing some more, and finally I had it at the door!

It would barely fit through there if the angle were just right and I pushed really hard. At this point there's carpet. Dang! They're carpet squares and they aren't glued down! Why didn't I think to take them up? sigh.

At this point, I'm already doing some serious sweating. Sweating? How unladylike! Uhm...I had a rosy glow? There was a lot more glow to come, let me tell you.

Inch by half inch, push, shove, tug, tilt, angle, pull and THERE! Through the door!

And stuck. I mean, really stuck. And I'm on the wrong side of it, meaning I'd squeezed between the door jam and the sofa at some point, and was now on the stairs. Well, it's a for sure fact I ain't gonna pull that behemoth up the stairs.

I decided that was a good time to go do something else, and trudged up the stairs to the kitchen, where a deceptively difficult ATC was waiting to be finished. That was a struggle, too, but at least I stopped glowing after a while.

So I went back down the stairs. The problem was the shelves at the bottom, specifically one box that poked out about an inch. Should've moved that box to begin with. If I could move it now....

Of course, the box wasn't on the top shelf, and all those shelves were on the other side of the loveseat from where I was standing. I needed to get to the other side. It's not a very tall sofa. I would shimmy over the top.

Up I went. Perched on the end, dropped my left leg over, through the door, crooked my right knee to bring my other leg down, and my foot hit the wall. I hung there, looking at my foot against the wall. Now I'M stuck, and my DH is an hour away, and my cell phone is upstairs. Okay. Wait. Don't panic. I am more flexible than a sofa. All I. Have to. Do. Is bend... Jussssst...YES! Got my foot down, dropped, and I'm standing on the other side. Whew.

Now to move that box. On the third shelf down. And the only way to do that was to empty the two shelves above it, removing a foot-wide shelving board as I went, with each removal of each item requiring a mighty shoulder-shove against the sofa to balance it, tilted, just far enough away from the shelf to wedge myself in and lift a box of books (!) or shelving straight up and out.

When I'd emptied the shelves, I managed to shove the sofa just enough into the closet space to let me squeeze through, and there it stayed until this morning, when the DH and I, working together, managed to drag it up the steps.

I wonder if, next time, I'll realize I do have physical limits. Nah. So I'd better start working now to make sure those limits are a bit further out than they are now!