The case of the missing sofa cushion consumed half a day.
It pushed my blood pressure and anxiety levels to the red line, and placed a major question mark on my memory capacity once again.
We are undertaking a family renovation of a unit we have in Maroochydore.
The two boys are into it and of course old mate is finding some bargains – some so good that she is buying goods the family doesn’t need.
The sofa she found was in Moffat Beach, and it was quite important in the scheme of things as the unit is a one-bedder.
A good couch was a good strategy.
The conversation went something like this: “Are you using your ute tomorrow because I have found a cracking sofa and I want to pick it up and take it to the unit?”
I asked her how heavy the thing was and got a pretty vague answer.
Now let me translate her question for you.
What she was actually asking was if I could go and pick up the couch.
See, I have learnt something in 38 years of marriage.
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It’s in the morning when we head off to pick up this so-called “light sofa”.
Thankfully the former owner helps me load it into the ute.
It hung over the back of the tailgate.
I threw an ottoman on top, strapped it down and headed to Maroochydore in peak hour traffic.
I arrive to the unit and can’t get it off the truck, so I find a neighbour who helps me.
We put the couch in the garage, and it’s job done.
Or, so I thought, until she comes marching out telling me that the cushion is missing.
“Did it blow off? I handed it to you at Moffat,” she says.
Off I go back to Moffat, searching along the side of the road. I actually go back to the house, but no luck.
I come up with a donut, nothing, no cushion, and no memory of putting it in the back.
Stress levels soar as I head back to Maroochydore thinking, ‘if I have lost this bloody cushion I am dead’.
I ring to tell her there is no cushion and receive deadly silence.
I arrive back to the unit with fingers crossed that by some miracle it’s there.
Thank God, it is.
Turns out that I had put the cushion upside down so it was black, and she couldn’t see it.
“Silly me,” she says.
Wow.
Ashley Robinson is a columnist with Sunshine Coast News and My Weekly Preview. His views are his own.
