OK. I have to admit it. There are spirits living in this house and they are screwing with me.

You see my chair (below) - the one that is covered in a floral print upholstery?







Well, that's MY CHAIR. It's the one place on earth (at least in MY earth) where I can go and escape my body pains. Mostly my hip/leg pains. I didn't plan it that way, it just kind of worked out that way. It's a La-Z-Boy Recliner. I got it quite a few years ago. When I push it back into the reclined position, with the footrest up, it puts my whole body into just the right position so that my pains disappear (most of the time anyway). So you can well imagine that, even though it's getting pretty thread-bare around the edges, and it creaks etc., I love that chair! Even my bed doesn't give me any pain-free time, just that chair does!

I am the only one who ever sits in it, too. So if it breaks, it's all my fault.

Lately, it's been dying a slow death, and that fact has been causing me a lot of aggravation and worry. I need ONE PLACE TO GO to escape the pain, and without that chair, there is none for me.

Recently, when I try pushing the wooden lever on the side to raise the footrest into the "up" position, something inside goes berserk and it won't go. It gets about half-way up, then gets stuck there. I have to yank on the lever real hard with my right arm, which now has caused my right arm and shoulder to be in tremendous pain just from doing this. I have to yank that lever back and forth about an average of 20 to 26 times before the mechanism inside with let go of being stuck and go fully into the upright position. Otherwise, it just stays in limbo and I can't get it to go down either. So, once I've started the process of raising the footrest, I MUST continue on to the end or I won't be able to get out of the chair!

My arm/shoulder is not happy. I am not happy. Paul is becoming not happy because I go on about the chair all the time. What to do?

What to DO?

Buy another chair?

With what?

The other day I turned the chair over (yes, by myself) to see if I could see what the problem was, but I couldn't get my head down into the space to really see anything. So that didn't work.

I went online to look up La-Z-Boy chairs (and oh, did I mention that the next furniture I buy for this house HAS to be leather? That's because of all the infernal puppy-furs that get embedded in the cloth-covered furniture that is driving me bananas trying to keep clean) so I had to look at leather chairs which, of course, are a LOT MORE!

I was seeing $800+ and even $1200 and $1500... as price tags.

I asked Paul if he would set aside some time to drive me over to the La-Z-Boy showroom which is about 8 miles from here - but he's been so busy he hasn't had the time. Now that I've seen the prices of these babies, there is NO WAY I'm buying a new one.

SO WHAT TO DO?




Darn chair!

I started using a leather-like hassock that I'd bought a while ago but the angle that my legs are in when on that is not working for me like the chair does. I still have some pain using it.

Rats.

Well, yesterday I got in it, as usual, to have my morning coffee and watch some news, and I completely forgot about the problem with the mechanism and yanked that lever back to put the footrest up and POOF! It went up without any problem! I didn't dare do it more times in case it froze up again, so I stayed there til I was ready to leave the chair.

Today the same thing happened. It went right up, easy-peasy.

What the heck.....?

All I can say is that I have this personal angel, called "Olive," and I've got to think she has taken pity on me (and my basically empty pocketbook lately) and she has fixed that chair for me. Or had one of her underling-angels fix it.

I asked Paul if he'd fixed it (yeah, I know, that was a laugh) and he, of course, looked at me like I had 3 heads, saying "no!"

So it had to be Olive.

Thanks Olive. I love you. I need you and I'll try to talk to you more often in the future.

Cheers for the Chair (and for Olive),

Bex