CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: ADULTHOOD COUCHED ONLY IN MATERIAL TERMS

If you think your job is tough, watch two guys carry a sleeper sofa up a winding staircase.

My Christmas present to myself was delivered the other day.

A nice, shiny couch. A brand-new, custom-upholstered queen-size sleeper sofa.

There's nothing like buying furniture or major appliances to make you feel like an honest-to-goodness adult.

Or to create that hollow, echoing feeling in your checking account, but we're not going to talk about that right now.

The chair to go with it -- it's a recliner, but it looks like a wing chair, because one of the blessings of being a single woman is not having to buy furniture with remote controls hard-wired into the arms -- will be arriving after Christmas, but I can wait.

The futon has been relegated to the back bedroom while I decide what to do with it.

Anyone who's ever sat on the futon probably has several suggestions, but I don't think we can print them.

Suffice it to say my sister says the futon gave her kidney stones.

I don't think she's being sarcastic.

Now I can officially cocoon. I can be a genuine couch potato.

Let's face it; "futon potato" sounds like something you'd buy at a gourmet food store.

I love my new couch. It's the only thing in the apartment that's as overstuffed as I am.

The cat loves the new couch, too. There's something new for her to shed all over.

Neither Melissa nor I have much of a life, but we do have new furniture.

There were two defining moments in purchasing this couch.

When I walked into the furniture store to pay for the couch, my saleslady told me, "You know who you always remind me of?"

I'm not surprised when people say this to me; I look just like everyone's college roommate, aunt, sister-in-law, hairdresser's mother-in-law. The only celebrity I resemble is Kathy Bates.

"You look just like that gal who writes for the paper," she said.

Ooh, the burdens of fame.

The second came when the delivery guys arrived and came to survey my apartment before actually lugging the couch upstairs.

One delivery guy walked in, noted the empty spot in the room waiting for the sofa, then commented, "You don't have an outside exit."

Yikes.

The building does have a narrow winding staircase. Not a spiral staircase, but it winds up, with two small landings that mean it's very hard to maneuver large pieces of furniture.

This is reality therapy. The next time you think your job is tough, watch two guys try to maneuver a sleeper sofa up a winding staircase.

It's also educational, because I get to see all those natural laws I should have learned in high school science classes actually at work.

Sofas in motion, sofas at rest, equal and opposite reactions (the delivery guys cursed in harmony; it was amazing), and of course, and the universal law that says the piece of furniture must be a quarter of a millimeter too large to fit in any given room entrance.

The couch is about to become a central part of my personal environment, an indispensable entity.

There's no way I'm carrying it back down those stairs.

Peggy O'Farrell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.