So This is How to Feel Like a College Student Again

There's nothing that says "youth in the city" more than buying cheap bookcases and spending hours you could otherwise have spent earning money to purchase more expensive bookcases that you wouldn't have had to spend time on putting together yourself!
So, why not?  Bring it on!
After three decades of marriage, buying and getting rid of furniture for the three suburban houses we lived in, surely putting together a bookcase in a Boston apartment would not be an issue for this empty-nester?
I have delicious memories of buying our first bookshelves as a couple. In those days (ah, the '80s...) there was no such thing as IKEA, but there were sweet Scandinavian furniture stores where you could get all the laquer and teak furniture to fill Madison Square Garden.
As newlyweds we bought eight bookcases and teak shelves in various configurations to fill a whole wall of our starter house (still have most of these pieces in the suburban house's basement filled with kids' mementos, photo albums and slides we will never convert to digital images though we keep saying we should).
But we're not newlyweds any more and have some more disposable cash, so we went one step higher than IKEA or the local mom-and-pop Scandinavian furniture stores in the mall: we chose Crate and Barrel's Sloane shelving system -- but no one told us it had to be put together...
(Actually, I did know that - but I also knew that if I told my husband he would never have agreed to buying them.
I'm not apologizing: the only way a 31 year marriage survives is through subterfuge and strategy.
I plan to make it to our 75th anniversary.)
Thankfully Crate and Barrel delivers to the second floor and we bought the furniture during free delivery sales period, so when the enormous 6 boxes (one weighing 60 pounds) arrived at the Boston apartment we just pointed to the spare bedroom/office (actually, our youngest daughter did that since I was stuck on the other side of Commonwealth Avenue with the car, unable to cross the street because of some unnamed walk-a-thon that frankly we could do without in the middle of a city - haven't we had enough of these things anyway?).
The boxes sat there for 3 days until the morning our daughter -- who had just graduated Columbia and shamed into helping us move since she didn't have a job yet -- was due to return to the "real" city of Manhattan in pursuit of a job. That's when panic struck me - if she left who would help me put them together?
There was no way to get hubby to help me (he never agreed to this in the first place, he thought what I showed him the in showroom was what we bought).  The landlord is nice, but I'm still getting used to this living-in-an-apartment adventure and I've watched too many episodes of "Friends" to trust neighbors. So, youngest-daughter was once again shamed into helping out. Her train for NYC left at 3:30pm, it was only 9am, surely, in the immortal words of "Rosie the Riveter": "We Can Do It!"
Panic struck again around 3:00pm when youngest-daughter and I had already built (incorrectly backwards) and taken apart and re-built only 2 of the 3 shelves.
Six hours, two ordered-in sandwich wraps, a pot of coffee, and still no beautiful shelving unit.
As she bolted out of the apartment to Back Bay station to catch the 3:30 train, youngest daughter sneered...I had failed her!
I think all mothers want to empower daughters with self-reliance, but all I had done was prove that indeed neither of us could cut it as engineers - her father's dream for her (she turned out to be a writer), or contractors (ironically my father's occupation - though I don't think he ever had dreams of me growing up to become one).
Defeat hit us both hard. (Well, it hit me hard - I think she was just annoyed.)
I bitterly assumed the sole responsibility of finishing that last shelf (a desk unit nonetheless!) all by myself.
About 30 minutes later, youngest-daughter called to say she had missed the train, was re-ticketed on the next one in 2 hours and was walking back to the apartment.
Happy happy, joy joy - I got her back for another 2 hours - notwithstanding her 22-year-old you-don't-know-nuthin' attitude, I love this kid and wanted to prove to her that -- Yes, women can do anything!
So when she walked back up the stairs and into the spare bedroom/office sipping her Dunkin Donuts Iced Coffee (because "Mom, you can't just make iced coffee at home!") youngest-daughter was witness to a miracle:  I had completed the unit and (at least in my mind) transferred all that good feminism to the next generation.
She brightened, took out her phone, told me "turn around and smile" and, wallah:  moment immortalized, lesson learned...