Swedish Design and the Art of Not Lighting Oneself on Fire

As I'm getting ready to set up a home office, I need a desk and a chair. Ones that are comfortable, but I don't want to spend a ton of money. Plus, it has to go up to the third floor, so that's limiting in itself. As a result, we decided to make a trip to Ikea. On a Saturday. Afternoon. On a really nice warm (for winter) sunny day.


Idiots. We are idiots.


I forgot that in exchange for clean Swedish design at affordable prices, you have trade in your sanity.


I also forgot the cardinal rules of Ikea:

1. Go during the week. In the morning. If you must go on the weekend, be there for the opening of the store. Otherwise, it's mayhem. And, you can't leave your kid in Småland for more than 45 minutes on the weekend - it's double that on weekdays. That leaves you trying to harangue a small child from darting away into the merchandise, pulling throw blankets, lapdesks, extension cords, plastic cups, and numerous stuffed animals out of bins and begging, at full volume, with more than a little whine thrown in, to pleasepleaseplease buy this. Much easier to carry around the Cheesecake Factory-style beeper and stroll at your leisure. You can even sit down on an EKTORP TULLSTA and have a nice minute to yourself.
2. Figure out how long you think you will be there, then multiply by 2. If you're there on a weekend, use a multiplier of 3. There's a Madeline L'Engle-worthy wrinkle in time inside that big blue box. Nothing is at it seems.
3. Don't go hungry. Sure, you want to avail yourself of the cheap Swedish meatballs, or promise yourself that there will be a cup of decent coffee and a more than decent cinnamon roll awaiting you after checkout. However, see item 2. You may die before you get there.
4. Recognize that Ikea is the land of slow walkers and Sunday drivers and all of that will conspire to make you want to scream, loudly, for everyone to just get the hell out of your way. But you can't. And you shouldn't. Especially not in front of your five-year-old. (The baby, however, totally won't remember or judge you so feel free.)
5. Make sure there's beer or wine or whatever beverage takes some of the pain away in the fridge at home for afterwards. I don't really need to explain that one.

So now I have a lovely new home office, which will make the return to work much more enjoyable. But it's in pieces. In boxes. Heavy boxes. In the car. In the garage. Three staircases from where it will eventually be built.

Yeah, I'm not going to think about that right now.

Happy Birthday to Me!

I was thinking today about how much celebrating my birthday has changed in the past 10 years. Some things are very different at 36 than 26...I'm sure you would like to know exactly how, in a numbered and bulleted list, so I'll tell you.

1. Sleeping in (especially on my birthday) is key. Today I slept in until 9, which is a deficit of about 4 hours from birthdays in my 20s, but that small amount is even more appreciated now.
2. 10 years ago today we left for our honeymoon. I'm pretty sure I'm not leaving the house at all today, but my husband and daughter are probably going to run out and grab me an US Weekly, so I can take a bath and have some mindless entertainment as an accompaniment.
3. In 2002 my phone was ringing off the hook with birthday greetings. Today, thanks to the magic of cell phones and Facebook I have received about 3 texts and 80 wall posts, and it's been just lovely. Plus, those don't wake the baby.
4. I have kids now. That's just huge. Although I think our cats are actually needier, vomitier, and generally require more energy from us than the human children, and two of those cats were here 10 years ago.
5. When I was 26, I was in between semesters of my third year in law school. Now I'm on maternity leave...so similarly, I don't have to go anywhere, I'm wearing comfy pants and not showering. So on that front, things are pretty much the same.
6. I will be enjoying cake, coffee, and a cocktail - true then, true now.

I'm going to go and watch tv now while I run on the treadmill. Now that I'm this old, I guess it'll have to be reruns of Matlock.

20 days left

I was going to accomplish so many things while on maternity leave. Such as: sort, classify and prettify the past 6 years' worth of digital pictures, make significant progress on the draft of my collaborative witchy-teen novel, exercise almost every day, get the house complete clean and organized, and write a billion baby gift thank you notes. I have 20 days left and I think I really accomplished two things in the past 12 weeks.

1) I kept the baby alive, and
2) I bought a Keurig.

And the Christmas cards, as mentioned in a previous post, I guess those count too...I'll be bragging about that until at least May.

Taking procrastination to a whole new level.

Really? It's been more than two years since I've blogged? Huh. I have excuses for the past three months - move to a new state, new baby, all of that...but the two years prior, well, I was probably just tired.

But now I have a new computer, and that's always inspiring, isn't it? Like a new sheet of paper - fresh, lined, with a perfect pen next to it, full of possibilities - but significantly more expensive.

I did send out Christmas cards this year, for the first time in...well, wait...let me think...ever? I had to make a list from scratch, so yeah, probably ever. They were lovely though.

Time to take a shower...on maternity leave, that really doesn't occur as much as I would like it to, so I will seize my opportunity while I can.