My sister and brother-in-law came over last night; my brother-in-law, a skilled woodworker, was going to fix my desk.

Here is the thing I learned about buying things from the online division of Target: You can’t return defective merchandise to an actual store, you have to pack it all up in the original shipping and send it back. The odds of me doing this are, of course, slim to none.

The desk in question is very nice. Natural wood finish, classic Mission style - and it was on sale. I’d waited a long time for a sale and my cash flow to converge, and was very excited to get it a few months after I’d moved in.

But here’s the thing. You know how everything is now held together with those metal widgets, the kind where you line up a metal protrusion into a metal disk, and then you turn it to tighten it? It wouldn’t work. After an evening of cursing and complaining, I figured out the problem: The desk top (the heaviest piece) was seriously warped, so nothing would properly align. I looked closely at everything else, and concluded the only thing I could do was screw the damned thing together. More accurately, I’d get my sister’s husband to do it.

But as a stopgap measure, I sort of slammed it all together and leaned it against the wall. The whole thing wobbled. The keyboard tray often fell out, and so did the desk drawer. It all functioned in an uneasy state of wary co-existence for several months, until last night.

I suspect my brother-in-law put this all down to user error (i.e. my fault). But after trying to force it all into line, he finally gave up and screwed it all together. Now it doesn’t wobble.

While he was working on the desk, my sister drove me to the local Home Depot, where I had to buy a propane tank in preparation for the Great Bridal Shower of ‘08 in a few days. I’ve never bought one before, and my sister frowned as she looked at it. “Are you sure it’s full?” she said. (As she will tell you, she doesn’t trust anyone or anything.)

It never even occurred to me to ask. “It must be,” I argued. “Let me call,” she said, and spoke to her husband. Well! Who knew? I had to return the damned thing and buy one from the propane exchange. (Boy, those suckers are heavy when they’re full.)

I’d been obsessing about this for a while, and was glad my BIL was there to hook it up for me. So now I have fire for the ritual burning of animal flesh, which will of course ensure that my son’s marriage is a long and happy one. Hallelujah!