MARSHMALLOWS OPTIONAL

I don't know what possesses me to stay up late because I am exhausted. Oh, wait - yes, I know what it is: THE BOX FROM HOME DEPOT.

Inside the box from Home Depot is an electric fireplace.  Unlike the other electric fireplace that I already own, this one is less expensive and states "some assembly required."  Anyone who knows me also knows that I cannot follow those visual picture instructions to save my own life and actually put off building a desk I bought for three years over fear of failure building it.

This doesn't leave much room for hope where the fireplace is concerned.

I carefully open the big box to reveal another box inside of it.  Excellent!  Apparently Home Depot has shipped me a giant Matryoshka doll; I will keep opening more and more boxes of increasingly smaller size until I discover a Bic lighter in the bottom.

No, wait.  I open the second box, and there is actually a fireplace inside of it.  This is good news.  I pull the styrofoam off and notice a bag of screws.  Pissah.  There really is "some assembly required." That's the bad news.  The good news is that it's only one bag of a dozen screws.  This should only take me a little while to figure out.  Right?

Once I get the fireplace out, the first thing I notice is that it's substantially larger than I expected for the amazingly low price I paid for it brand new and out of the (two) box(es). The second thing I notice is that it has no legs.  I look into the Matryoshka box and find the four legs all set for me to assemble.  I guess having the factory actually put the legs on is too much to ask automatons.  Four legs plus twelve screws equals easy. Right?

Well, the fireplace is black.  The legs are black.  And, you guessed it, the screws are black, as well.  Simply assembling the multiple pieces to attach where they're supposed to is hard enough because there's do delineation of color, and everything is now in Ninja mode.  I grab a flashlight, but it is impossible to hold the legs in place, the screwdriver in the correct upright position, and actually see what I am doing using the flashlight and every light in the house because I still only have two hands and a pair of strong reading glasses.

Oh, and the instructions.  With pictures.  And arrows.  Because I am a moron.

The screwdriver (and its operator) is failing badly, but I have a drill that will screw these bad boys into place in no time. I look for my drill at eleven o'clock at night, like this is something normal people do, realize my daughter has my drill, text her that I need my drill ASAP because I need heat ASAP.  Like real normal people, she is sleeping.  I make due the best I can as the screws do not want to sink completely into the feeder holes.

I finally get the legs, all four of them, secure enough to take a chance and stand the fireplace up into its correct position.  So far, so good.  I plug the cord into the wall, immediately start playing with the controls, decide I should probably at least skim the manual, then set my new fireplace onto its hightest heat setting.

SUCCESS! 

I now have enough heat between two mobile and safe electric fireplaces to hopefully heat the rooms I need, including the bedrooms upstairs and the bathroom that is in the farthest point of the house totally away from anything that makes sense and tucked behind my kitchen.  But, I HAVE heat.  Considering that I still have no gas service to my house so I still have no hot water or cooking gas, either, this is huge.  This is worth staying up for. 

This is freaking EPIC.

Best of all, the "flames" look better than the bigger electric fireplace that I have in my living room.  I'm really going to enjoy this one (and I can watch the "flames" without the heat if I want to).  Now I can go to sleep (well past midnight and beyond) and be secure in the thought that when I wake up and it's fifty degrees outside and slightly more than that (but not much) inside, I can at least warm up by the pretend fire... marshmallows optional.