Okay, so I admit it. I may not be as good at DIY as I have claimed.

Okay, so Monday I had a moment to reflect on my life as we were about to enter a new year. I sat on the edge of my bed and looked on at my new room, my third room that I had had in as many years and saw all the boxes and bin bags littering the floor. I tried to move from my bed to get to the door and almost tripped over about three times... I knew then what I had to do... A month into living at my new home, I realised it was probably time for me to unpack.

For the first time since moving in and forming this realisation, I actually found myself not following this thought with an almighty fatigue and a decision to instead bury myself underneath my covers and applying the age old rule of "if I can't see it then it's not really there." Instead, I found what I believe the kids are calling "energy." Yes, I responded to my realisation finally with a can-do attitude and earnestly went on the search for a black bin bag and some wine.

Once I had my necessities in place, I briefly wondered what it is that I should be starting with... There was a lot to choose from, let me tell you. I decided on the big things like rearranging my furniture so that I actually had places to put the unpacked goodies awaiting me.

This meant moving my chest of drawers, the air conditioning unit that came with the room (apparently it gets pretty hot in there during the summer) and my desk.

Now, my lovely and scrumptious hosts of my new house (I'm living with a family I know whilst I save money to go to America in July) had beautifully put up my desk whilst I was at my parents for Christmas as I had mentioned that I had the flat pack with me but no longer had any instructions. Guys, I am not one of those people who say "be damned with the instructions! I am DIY Woman!! I can put this together with just the creativeness of my mind and it will look exactly as it should!!" However, Mr-Host is that person... Minus the woman part and he had magically figured out how it was meant to go.

At this point I should probably mention that The-Family I am staying with had gone away for three days and as such, I was home alone when I had decided to be so pro-active with my room. Just keep that in mind as we will be coming back to this later.

Anywho, in order to put my desk where I wanted I needed to move the air conditioning unit and chest of drawers. Being a person who lives in England and so has never had a need for an air conditioning unit in my life, I figured that I could just place the unit on my bed whilst I dealt with the chest of drawers.

This is where we hit mistake No. 1. I lay the air conditioning unit down and make a move to leave my bed when I noticed some form of liquid dripping off my bed sheets. I immediately try and remember if I had been outside that day as whether it had been raining whilst I had been... When I found my memory coming up blank I quickly deduced that the liquid was not coming from me and noted that it did seem to be coming from the air conditioning unit laying flat on my bed.

I dashed to lift the unit off my bed and then found my next problem being that I had put the unit on the bed due to the lack of space currently on my floor... This led to me skipping on the spot with a now dripping air conditioning unit and nowhere to go.

Eventually I managed to navigate myself around the bags and boxes and practically fell into my wardrobe as I wedged it into the corner in what was the only space at that time available to me.

This of course then led to me running around with kitchen towels, trying my hardest to soak up all of the dirty water that had somehow managed to spread over all of the things in my room.

Once I had managed that situation, changed my clothes, taken a quick trip to buy new bed sheets for my single bed and finished making all manners of scrunched up expressions with my face, I faced the chest of drawers.

Moving this was pretty simple, albeit a little more difficult given that clothes had been one of the only things I had actually successfully unpacked and so it was the teensiest bit heavy. But it's fine, we deal, because I'm secretly capable of super strength.

Now I had the space available to move my desk into.

Reeling from the success of my moving my chest of drawers, I flexed my muscles once more and began the movement of my desk.

It didn't go as planned.

As I mentioned above, I was home alone so I couldn't go with the safe option if lifting and placing, instead I went with the solo option of dragging and hoping.

I dragged.

I hoped.

One side of the desk came with me, the other decided to stay where it was.

For those of you who are now imagining that the desk in question looks like this:

Alas, this is not the case. Instead, my desk looks like this:

Yeah... so you see that section of the desk without the bottom attached? That's the section I pulled, that's the section that came with me, the other bit? Not so much. It was quite happy where it was and so wanted to stay. And stay it did while half of the desk decided to wobble apprehensively. However the damage had been done and you see that little white bit of board underneath the main desk behind the pull out shelf? That bit decided to just go ahead and fall out on one side.

Now it was at this point that I managed to rebalance it, step back, scratch my head and re-assess. My conclusion? Well, I didn't want to take the whole thing apart. Especially given that Mr-Host was not in the house nor was anyone else and I was certain that I would not know how to put it back together should I try said dismantling.

So I then had the ingenious idea that all I need to was take the top half off, re-insert the white board and put it back on again. I know right? That is such a fool-proof idea it is abosultely impossible that anything could ever go wrong.

So I go ahead and unscrew the left side. The left board falls away and suddenly common sense hits me like... well, like a bunch of planks of wood. I watched as the left side of the desk started to collapse and immediately threw my whole body underneath it to prevent it from doing so... crisis averted! Yeay me! My genious DIY status was left intact... until I realised that there really was nowhere I could go from this position.

You see, behind me was the unending clutter of boxes and bin bags... in front of me was my desk immediately followed by a wall. I couldn't lay the desk down, I couldn't get to the right side to dismantle that side... I was well and truly stuck.

I began to panic by this point. I actually sat there for about five minutes running through all kinds of scenarios in my head on how I was going to work my way out of this situation. None of the scenarios actually resulted in any result other than the desk falling on me and either myself or it dying... or in one particular scenario including me somehow forming a pile of random crap big enough to support the left side of my desk and it falling on me with the desk following suit, we both died... I was not feeling hopeful.

So naturally I decided that the only logical step left for me was to sit there and cry out "help!" until a random neighbour might have heard me, knocked down the door and rescued me from my inevitable fate of death. Believe it or not, no one came. After a couple of minutes of calling out, I resorted to sitting in a more comfortable position (or as comfortable as one can get whilst supporting a heavy desk) and wimpering to myself.

I looked longingly at my phone sitting on the other side of the room, merrily playing 'Let me blow your mind' from Eve, and wondered if there was anyway that I might be able to reach it and call for help. However, then I had to deal with the issue of them getting into the house I was in when I was on the third floor. Perhaps I should just forego calling the friends and jump straight to the firemen...

The last thought I had, and the one that seemed the most likely, was that I would just have to wait until either One-And-Only-Daniela turned up that night to celebrate the new year (this plan also included One-And-Only-Daniela having to scale the side of my house to the skylight in my room, smashing the window and jumping in like some form of ninja...) or I would just have to wait until The-Family returned the following day.

So I repositioned myself and settled in for the most bizarre seeing in of the new year ever, me stuck under a desk, trying to keep the blood flow going through my arms and trying my hardest not to fall asleep... Fun.

I'll be honest, I tried it for about three minutes before I got extremely bored and my arms threatened to fall off. This was when the burst the adrenaline entered my system that I heard always heard occurred in life threatening situations just as this... I therefore contorted my body in a way I thought I was no longer able to do and simultaneously held up one side of the desk whilst I bent around and unscrewed the other two planks of wood.

After that, needless to say, I sat, basked in my freedom and drank some of my wine before I then started in on the task of getting the top end of the desk back on it's stands. I think I did pretty well in that area... I mean yes, there were a few aggressive words said to the desk like "Why the hell won't you just go in?" and "I don't know what you want from me? What am I doing wrong?" and yes, there was a lot of banging and forcing of wood together (I'm still talking about the desk here people, clean minds please). But I consider it a success when the desk eventually sticks together and (more importantly) stays together...

...

Okay, so there may be two little holes in the desk that seem to suggest they need something attached to it... but they're tiny so I'm choosing to ignore them...

See?

Anywho, that's been my new year... much love and stuff and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Peace out my lovelies