IKEA does it again

There are times that I enjoy a good rant, Lewis Black style so here goes...

R and myself want to replace a bar he has with a desk and possibly a book case so we decided to venture to IKEA today. So after a birthday shin-dig where we filled up on yummy but intensely greasy pizza we parked ourselves in front of the madness that IKEA is.

Oh IKEA. Where to begin? For some reason IKEA always lures me in like a good ol' cheeseburger at Mickey D's. I know the furniture is cheap, that it might not last long and that it looks a bit plastic/Ikea-esque but I get duped every time with the hope that maybe this time it'll be different. I hate the crowds (although we discovered that Satuday at 6pm is a GREAT time to go), the pungent smell of cinnamon rolls mixed in with a splash of swedish meatballs and the constant feeling of "why doesn't my room look like that?". The other thing that irks me is that I always feel like Dorothy. If I ever dare to veer away from the confident arrows painted on the floor, I'll have suddenly missed the area that I wanted to go to and furthermore I'm punished with my super abilites in getting lost!

Unfortunately, after spending over 2 hours walking painfully slow through a myriad of Swedish inspired bedrooms, living rooms and bathrooms to find a good desk and possibly a bookcase, drapes and maybe a couple rugs, we left with just 2 vanilla ice-cream cones. Yup, that's it - just 2 ice-cream cones. 2 hours at IKEA and 2 ice-cream cones. I figured that we spent a dollar for each hour we were there. Fan-tastic.

We actually did find a desk that we wanted but once we got to the bins, there weren't any left. After talking to an IKEA staff dressed like the Swedish flag (I hope I am never caught wearing bright blue and bright yellow together) he informed us that there were 16 desks in the store but that they were in the "air". After forcing me to have to ask the inevitable follow up question of "what does 'in the air' mean?", he let me know that they were stacked up on the shelves about 20 feet above my head. "They'll be down here tomorrow morning at 10am". He kind of said it like superman would have - like he had just provided this miracle answer to our dilemma. Unfortunately my little Swedish flag didn't realize that after 2 hours following an arrow around a maze of furniture, the miracle answer would have been to bring the desk out of 'the air' right that minute!

We decided to leave well alone and just get going. R and I had had enough and our feet were ready to be massaged by our personal foot masseus' waiting for us at home. Just kidding - I wish we had that! So whilst dragging our tired touches out of the store we came upon a giant ice-cream cone. We decided that instead of just looking at the poster we deserved to get ourselves $2 worth of treats. And hence this is how we ended up at IKEA for two hours and left with two vanilla ice-cream cones. Fan-tastic.

:)