TheBanyanTree: Those Bleedin' Swedes!

[Indiglow]

Lol!  You've made me laugh about something as horrific as an Ikea expedition!  Bless you!
J

--- On Mon, 3/28/11, Julie Anna Teague <jateague at indiana.edu> wrote:


From: Julie Anna Teague <jateague at indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: TheBanyanTree: Those Bleedin' Swedes!
To: thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com
Date: Monday, March 28, 2011, 6:47 AM


I had never been to an IKEA store, the nearest one being in Chicago, 5 hours away, but when I started going with the partner (now husband) to visit his family in Pittsburgh they informed me that they were blessed with an IKEA and that I must go and experience it.  So I dragged the husband there, kicking and screaming.  The first time we went I think we made it out in something like five hours, and I don't think I bought anything at all.  I was just completely overwhelmed.

For one thing, I am intimidated by all of the exact measurements on everything.  Some cabinet or other is, according to it's label, exactly 37.4" tall by 82.3" wide by 13.5" deep.  I'm more used to the "eyeballing it" method, but husband, a builder, would say things like, "Thirty-seven point four inches.  Would that fit where you want to put it?  You don't know exactly?  Well, you can't buy something if you aren't absolutely sure those measurements are correct."  I just found myself crying through my hands things like, "I don't KNOW if the space beside the toilet is 6.5 inches or 8.2 inches wide!  I don't KNOOOOOOW!"

For another thing, the maze concept is absolutely disturbing to me. There is no back-of-the-store or front-of-the-store. You don't come out where you go in. At the one in Pittsburgh you have to go all the way up first and then work your way back down.  I did get really lost once.  I was to meet husband in lighting but I kept circling through fabric, then candles, then flower pots in some frightening endless loop.  The nearest experience I've had to that is when I was spelunking in some local caves and trying to find my way out of a circle formation of underground rooms.  I finally had to have an employee direct me out of the smaller maze I was trapped in and out into the bigger maze that would lead me to lighting.

Husband blamed me for being in there for five hours, but he is the one who gets mesmerized by each and every tiny room and will stand staring at a certain kitchen cabinet setup for thirty minutes, trying each and every odd little self-closing cutlery drawer and lighted wine glass rack like it's space age technology.  Whereas I can shoot right to candles and napkins, load up my humongo blue bag, and shoot out again, happy as a clam.  The one redeeming feature of IKEA, though, is the Swedish nomenclature.  Son and husband and I got particularly hung up one year on something named "Aspudin" which we pronounced "ass puddin'" for the rest of the way through the store as in, "Did you pick up an ass puddin'?"  In fact, we laughed about it for nearly a week afterwards.  "What's for dinner, ass puddin'?"  Maybe we are easily amused.

And--blasphemy--I don't even like meatballs.  I do, however, like to stock up on their ginger thins.  All in all, it is a frightening place so it's good we only go there once every couple of years and treat it like an expedition.

Julie